Is it possible to generate math questions procedurally?

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#1

I want to generate math questions procedurally for a small education game im making for the fun of it. Although I don’t have any idea on how to do this? Please give me info how to do so.

#2

I don’t get what is so hard in that? If you want to do like basic sums / multiplications, then just generate a random sign using a table and choosing one from it and use math.random to choose the two random numbers.

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#3

But I dont want to have it be like “random number here” + “random number here” i also want the + to change into something else, thats what I dont know how to do. Because they’re not strings and I can’t generate them nor know how to.

#4

I also need the answer to the equation as well its just I need the + to change for example.

#5

You can have the different functions defined for the four operations or more if you need. And then assign them with keys in a table, then choose a random one from the table and pass the values and make the function do the math.

Example:

local function Add(a, b)
   return a+b
end

--Functions for other sums here

local Operations = {"Add" = Add, "Subtract", "Multiply", "Divide"}

local randomOperation = Operations[math.random(#Operations)]
randomOperation(math.random(100), math.random(100)) --Will run the function that was assigned to the random key it choose, and pass the two random numbers for the function to do the math.
#6

Not sure if this might be helpful to you but I tried making a function that generate random math problem with a settable range and stuff.

local AmountOfNumbers = 4 -- Amount of numbers for each problem
local RangeOfNumbers = {-10, 30} -- Random Range

local function GenerateMathProblem()
	local Answer = 0
	local PrintProblem
	local TableOfNumbers = {}
	for i = 1, AmountOfNumbers do
		table.insert(TableOfNumbers, math.random(RangeOfNumbers[1], RangeOfNumbers[2]))
	end
	for _,Number in pairs (TableOfNumbers) do
		if PrintProblem ~= nil then
			local Sign = math.random(1, 2)
			if Sign == 1 then
				Answer += Number
				PrintProblem = 
					Number > 0
					and tostring(PrintProblem) .. " + " .. Number
					or tostring(PrintProblem) .. " + " .. "(" .. Number .. ")"
			elseif Sign == 2 then
				Answer -= Number
				PrintProblem = 
					Number > 0
					and tostring(PrintProblem) .. " - " .. Number
					or tostring(PrintProblem) .. " - " .. "(" .. Number .. ")"
			elseif Sign == 3 then
				Answer *= Number
				PrintProblem = 
					Number > 0
					and tostring(PrintProblem) .. " * " .. Number
					or tostring(PrintProblem) .. " * " .. "(" .. Number .. ")"
			else
				Answer /= Number
				PrintProblem = 
					Number > 0
					and tostring(PrintProblem) .. " / " .. Number
					or tostring(PrintProblem) .. " / " .. "(" .. Number .. ")"
			end
		else
			Answer = Number
			PrintProblem = tostring(Number)
		end
	end
	print(PrintProblem)
	print(Answer)
end

GenerateMathProblem()

Result:

I probably made a mistake around multiplication and division though.

maybe try using this as a ref? lol

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#7

That does not appear to respect order of operations (BEDMAS/PEMDAS/your regional variant). You could fix the underlying issue, but for simplicity’s sake it might be easier to just put parentheses around each operation. Something like (((x ? y) ? z) ? a) or whatever.

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