AxiomHow ratings work
Every topic you practise tracks your skill with a rating. Here's what the numbers mean.
The basics
Each topic has three ratings, one per question style.
Fast recall and procedural fluency. Single-step problems.
Exam-style questions worked by hand. No calculator assistance.
Exam-style questions with the CAS calculator available.
Every rating starts at 1500 when you first sign up and moves up or down as you practise.
Rating tiers
Each rating has a label that updates as your number moves.
What the ? means
Each rating also has a deviation showing how certain it is. New ratings start at 350 and drop as you practise.
The ? means the rating is provisional. Keep practising and it goes away.
The ? stays until the deviation drops below 100, usually a few sessions per format.
Topic and subject averages
Your three format ratings average into a topic rating, and topics into a subject rating.
Your rating counts what you've done, but the ? only goes away once you've done everything.
A worked example
Suppose you've played several Exam 1 sessions on Calculus and settled at 1575. You've also played a handful of Exam 2 sessions and currently sit at 1499, but your deviation is still high so a ? appears next to it. You haven't touched Drill at all.
Your Calculus rating is the average of the two question formats you've practised: (1575 + 1499) / 2 = 1537. Drill isn't included because you haven't tried it yet — using the default 1500 would imply performance you haven't demonstrated.
The ? still appears next to 1537 because two of the three question formats still have high deviation — the system isn't confident about your overall Calculus skill yet.
Why your rating moves
Each question is like a match against an opponent of equal difficulty. Your rating goes up if you do better than expected, down if worse. The change depends on:
- How unexpected the result was. Harder questions move your rating more.
- How certain the system is. High deviation early on means bigger changes. As certainty grows, changes shrink.