Desmos API v1.11.0 released

[desmos-api-announce]

Desmos Studio PBC is very happy to announce the release of version 1.11.0 of the Desmos API. 

• Change log

• Documentation

This release is part of our scheduled release cycle, and we recommend all users upgrade to this version. Benefits of upgrading include:

• remaining consistent with what students see on high-stakes tests where Desmos Calculators are embedded in the test platform.

• offering an experience for students in your product similar to the one at desmos.com.

• ensuring the best interaction with the latest browsers and platforms.

We will help all of our partners upgrade to version 1.11.0 in a timely fashion. Please email Chris Lusto (ch...@desmos.com) with any questions. 

These technical release notes are intended for developers who incorporate the Desmos API into their own applications. We ask kindly that you do not forward this email to your customers. If you’d like a user-facing summary to send to your customers (districts, teachers, etc.), or for other product inquiries, please contact Chris or email partne...@desmos.com.

New Features:

Version 1.11.0 introduces a suite of statistics tooling in the graphing calculator that allows users to construct confidence intervals, perform hypothesis tests, and explore their underlying distributions within a single, coherent framework.

1. Hypothesis testing and confidence intervals. The graphing calculator has greatly expanded its capabilities for performing statistical inference. Users can conduct a variety of significance tests for both quantitative and categorical data, from which it is possible to dynamically explore hypotheses and confidence intervals. Results are presented in both numeric and graphical form, and if desired these values and diagrams can be easily exported as their own first-class expressions for further analysis.

2. New inference menu. The graphing calculator now includes a unified interface for creating distributions and inference expressions. While it is always possible to type the relevant built-in functions directly into an expression via a keyboard or the on-screen keypad, the inference menu also gives users the option to construct those expressions by selecting a test or distribution from the list and following prompts to enter the required data or parameters.

3. Improved cumulative probability interface. The graphing calculator now provides more flexible options for computing cumulative probabilities from distributions, allowing users to easily choose among inner, outer, or left/right tail regions. For continuous distributions, users can also solve the inverse problem—computing the bounds that capture a given area—directly from the interface, without having to resort to manual calculations. 

4. Expanded and improved distribution offerings. The graphing calculator has added built-in support for both the chi-square and geometric distributions. And the numerical algorithms underlying some existing distributions have been improved to give increased accuracy for extreme parameter values.

New API Features:

1. Added the reportPosition configuration option, which specifies how object positions are reported to screen readers. Valid options are "coordinates", "percents", and "default". When set to "default", the calculator reports objects in coordinate space if either the X or Y axis is visible. If neither are shown, positions are reported as percentages from the viewport's top and left edges.

2. Added the showEvaluationCopyButtons configuration option, which displays a button next to expression evaluations that copies the evaluation LaTeX to the system clipboard (by default) or invokes a custom callback.

3. Added the onEvaluationCopyClick configuration option, which allows API consumers to define custom copy logic that will be invoked whenever the user clicks an expression evaluation's copy button. The default implementation copies the evaluation LaTeX to the system clipboard.

4. Added a regressionTemplates option that controls the ability to create regressions from a menu of model options from the table interface. See the support article on regressions for more information. This complements the customRegressions option added in v1.10. To disable regressions completely, you can disable both customRegressions and regressionTemplates.

Code Updates:

1. The new statistical inference features are also gated by the existing distributions configuration option, so if you would like users to be able to perform hypothesis testing and construct confidence intervals, you should ensure that the graphing calculator’s distributions option is set to true (the default).

2. If you are using the calculator in an assessment product, consider setting the capExpressionSize option to true. This will set a lower-than-default limit on expression size and nesting depth for MathQuill inputs, which decreases the likelihood of users entering expressions large enough to cause performance problems in rendering typeset math.