Isaac Physics: 2016 in Numbers

Isaac went from strength to strength in 2016; we had nearly 30,000 users sign up, and saw 1.6 million question parts answered by 29,000 active students! (Though 20% of our new users haven’t answered any questions, yet!). More than 14,000 assignments were set by 1,100 teachers.

4,312,000Question attempts made
1,219,000Hints viewed
96,000Concept page views
53,700Hint videos watched
29,300New registered users
14,250Assignments set
6,600Password resets sent
3,900Groups created
2,000Students attended workshops
110Isaac student workshops

The new academic year starting in September led to a lot of questions being answered, though it fell off towards Christmas:

A chart of question attempts per month!

We can also look at how many of our students were active in answering questions through the year:

A chart of active users per month!
The number of question attempts drops before December, but the number of users making those attempts doesn't. Does this show students getting better at answering our questions? Are they mastering significant figures? Or are they just getting less productive as Christmas draws near?

One last chart, showing lots of homework set by our teachers; hard at work even through their summer holidays:

A chart of assignments set per month. More than 200 assignments were set in August; teachers don't get holidays!

Let’s see what 2017 brings!


The charts were created using Python's Matplotlib and its neat XKCD-esque style settings!


Blog post author photo

James Sharkey

James is a physicist turned reluctant computer scientist, working both on the physics and computing for Isaac