

Show HN: Math.ly (MVP) Do you think there's a market for something like this? - dustyreagan
http://math.ly

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AndrewWarner
Not sure what the market is for this, but if the questions were simpler, I'd
play @ my desk while eating my lunch.

A few suggestions: \- find a way for me to challenge my friends so you get
some virality and the game is more meaningful \- offer multiple skill levels.
Start easy so you can get teachers to recommend it in their classes \- let us
"boast" if we got a question right or a streak of questions right

~~~
ZeroMinx
Agree with everything Andrew said.

If one could select an easier level, I'd push some nephews / nieces to that
site. Then, I guess a bit of "challenge friends" could aid in them actually
using it to improve their math skills.

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dustyreagan
I know it's backwards to create something, then wonder if there is a market
for it. But, I created this site after I tried to find some random algebra
questions to practice and found nothing clean, for lack of a better word. So I
made this to fill my own need/want. But I wonder if others would actually use
a site like this.

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acangiano
What's the business model? Or do you plan to keep this a pet project of sort?

~~~
dustyreagan
I think I'd like to have free random problems, and a pro account would include
problems that have a video explaining that particular problem's solution.
Something along those lines.

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chad_oliver
I'm a student studying engineering. This year, I did really well in physics
because my lecturer had given us a list of 40 questions from the textbook that
covered everything we needed to know. I spent the day before the exam going
through all the questions, and when I got into the exam I knew how to answer
every single question. I got an A for that exam.

On the other hand, I failed my maths exam. There were various reasons for
this, but one was simply that I spend to long looking at textbook, and not
enough time answering questions. A full quarter of the questions in the exam
were totally new to me; I had absolutely no idea how to even begin answering
them.

The moral of the story? I would pay good money for a website that provided a
set of questions that covered everything I needed to know. Obviously that's a
big ask, especially at the university level. Perhaps you could allow users to
define what categories of questions they need to be able to handle, or even
create rules for generating new sets of questions. If I could spend 2 hours
defining what questions I should be asked (and then share those settings with
others in my class), then spend the rest of the day practicing those
questions, that would be a day well spent.

What would I pay for that? Easily $20/semester, probably closer to $50.

Another way I could use this website is for revision or passive learning.
Start with basic maths, and slowly add new categories of questions (negative
numbers, then algebra, then calculus). If you could somehow generate _how_ to
solve the question, that would be even better - you could have an "I'm stuck,
how do I solve this" button that would be perfect for learning at your own
pace. Alternatively, you could just have one 'methods' page per category of
questions, and every question of that type would link to that page. It would
be feasible to hand-write those pages, or allow others to write them (or even
just add their own notes that only they see).

Also, you might want to learn about spaced repetition learning - perhaps it's
something you could implement.

If you don't want to use all (or any) of these ideas, that's fine. What you've
got is great, but I hope my ideas get you thinking!

And finally, best of luck. I hope you change (this corner of) the world.

~~~
dustyreagan
Awesome input! Thanks! :)

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Dove
I think it would be more compelling with a metagame offering an incentive to
play. Edutainment games in which solving the equation slays the zombie are
generally lame, but something along the lines of achievements might work.

You could separate the problems into classes -- the sort of thing that could
be done with no algebra knowledge (3 + x = 8), simple manipulation (2x + 5)^2
= 6, factoring, quadratic formula, requires clever tricks with logs, requires
a numerical approach such as Newton's method, etc. Heck, you could go all the
way to Diophantine equations.

In parallel, people could select problems to attempt and earn bragging rights.
"Solved a transcendent equation in 90 seconds", "Solved eight factoring
problems in a row", that sort of thing.

Give people a sense of progress and achievement and maybe something to show
off. They might be motivated to learn how to tackle harder problems, or
jealous of their peers who can. I might play it just for fun at that point.

Perhaps monetize it by letting people spend a buck to have a public display
space with what they've done?

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pkulak
I could see this being useful, actually. Flesh it out with a bunch of options
(no-variables, linear, quadratic, parens, constant ranges, number of terms,
etc) and it could really help teach concepts. I remember my wife was studying
for a math test and she kept getting tricked up on negative integer
multiplication and division. I built something exactly like this on the
command line (only in that small domain) and she was able to do 30-40 problems
in just 5 minutes. It really made it all sink in and stay there.

~~~
noahlt
Another good option: only integer answers.

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Xk
Or give an option. Only integers / Only rationals (with denominator something
reasonable) / Only reals / Only Gaussian integers / Only Gaussian rationals /
All complex numbers.

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SHOwnsYou
While the font gives it a real math textbook like feel, they take forever to
load. I reloaded a few times before giving up and going to a new tab. It
wasn't until I went to close it that I saw something had loaded.

Additionally, the first problem I saw was 5x^2 - 2 = 0, all possible answers
were really long floats. Intimidating if that's the first thing you see.

I could see it being interesting if there was a Help button that walked you
through the next step of the problem (ie: it changed 5x^2 - 2 = 0 to 5x^2 = 2,
then click help again, you get the next step, and on and on until the answer).

Also adding levels of difficulty, different problem types (quadratic equation
for example), maybe some kind of completion thing. I don't know. Making it
more of a game than a chore.

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achompas
Cool idea. One thing:

1\. When the page loads, the question & answers flash for a second then
disappear. Using Firefox 3.6.13 on Windows.

Otherwise I have the same suggestions as Andrew.

~~~
dustyreagan
Thanks!

Ok, I think I got the FireFox thing figured out. Let me know if it's still
wonky. (You might need to flush cache? Hopefully not.)

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swalberg
If you're going after students, have a look at <http://www.mathletics.ca/> and
<http://www.rainforestmaths.com/>

We signed up our kids for a year for ~$200. It was pretty good, but there are
ways it could be improved, such as not using Flash everywhere. But there's a
lot of activity on that site, and therefore a lot of money to be made.

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ilconsigliere
I like the idea, however my first question was a bit confusing (not the
math!):

"2x - 2 + -1x + 2 = 5x2 - 4"

Is it necessary to use 'x' for multiplication? It's a bit confusing to be
solving for x and have multiplication be represented as x as well.

I clicked through a few more questions and found this:

"-4x - 3 = -3x + 3 - -9xx2 - 9"

Can you use a '*' to represent multiplication?

~~~
dustyreagan
Oh, it sounds like the javascript font rendering isn't working for you. Do you
have JavaScript disabled?

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ilconsigliere
You are correct. I had allowed math.ly in NoScript but not the additional
sites. Fixed. Thanks

~~~
dustyreagan
Ah! I'll move those JavaScript files to the Math.ly domain soon to fix that
problem for users that might have the same issue. Good insight. Thanks!

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jey
Who's the target audience or what's the prototypical use case?

Also, I'd switch it from multiple choice to having a free-form text input
field that allows the common ways of expressing rational values, e.g. "5",
"10/2", and "5.00". (And make the equation generator generate only problems
with simple rational representations.)

~~~
dustyreagan
My thoughts are that it would be used by students for practice, and possibly
by teachers to generate quizes.

Excellent feedback on the free-form text input, and rational answers. I was
thinking about randomly alternating from multiple choice to free form. Maybe
eventually adding a switch for the user to decide.

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habitatforus
A feature I would like is for the site to suggest to me what my weakness is.

I answer ten questions, you tell me that I don't understand _________.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
How about use a star-diagram to show results and then use a thumbnail version
of that same one (coloured for scale) as a users avatar?

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patrickaljord
khan has something similar
<http://www.khanacademy.org/exercises?exid=linear_equations_1>

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mindcrime
I could see something like that being useful. Would be nice if you could
select a category for "what kind of question" do you want. I'd also like to
see immediate feedback after each question, including an explanation of how to
solve the question properly (if the wrong answer is submitted).

I could see paying for a service like that. Especially if the scope of the
material ranged all the way from high-school algebra through - at least -
college level calc, diff eq, linear algebra, etc. I say this as somebody who's
just now attempting to go back through his old college algebra/calc notes,
refresh on calc, and then trying to teach himself differential equations and
linear algebra. For somebody like me, a site like this could be really, really
useful.

~~~
dustyreagan
I was thinking about creating a paid service like you're describing. Free
random questions for all, but a pro account would get explanations on how to
solve the particular questions. Ideally in video format.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Could you scale this by having experts that have reached a particular level
paid to answer enquiries for solutions. Then a student could pay for the
answer to be explained there and then?

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njs12345
Perhaps link to/embed the Khan Academy videos for the topic if answered
incorrectly?

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some1else
Not sure, but I once made something similar to help a friend pass her test.
Something regarding history in literature.

<http://filo.heroku.com/>

I was planning on extracting this to a general flashcard app for people to
collaboratively create quizzes with facts from their curriculum.

This was coded in a day with Rails, but I have a pretty good idea of how to
abstract and scale it up. Get in touch with me if you're looking for somebody
to team up with.

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xfs
See also Project Euler <http://projecteuler.net/> . Maybe you can use these as
advanced captchas?

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sz
Take the one thing a computer can do better than humans and use it as a
captcha? Huh?

~~~
xfs
For Project Euler, they are all textual questions and require reasoning rather
than mere calculation.

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petervandijck
Awesome. Should be easier at first and then, instead of just a "Next" button,
you could have 2 buttons: "next" or "next but harder".

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iterationx
If you turned it into a wiki and allowed people to see other people's answers
written out then maybe but no not in its current form.

~~~
dustyreagan
Ultimately I was thinking of math problems with perm URLs, and possibly blog
style comments underneath. I wonder if a wiki would be better than inline user
comments.

~~~
Mgccl
Nice, I was thinking of building the site that contains every published math
problems or algorithm to generate them.

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PaulHoule
I've got enough real math problems to solve than to mess around with these.
They're also a bit hard to solve -- nothing I couldn't handle with paper and
my HP48, but not fun... I don't get the sense that there are any clever little
secrets that would make short work of them.

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rednum
There are some problems with displaying in firefox 3.6.13. The symbols appear
for a split-second, then disappear for a few seconds and then reappear again.

~~~
dustyreagan
I think I got the FireFox thing figured out. Let me know if it's still wonky.
(You might need to flush cache? Hopefully not.)

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pixcavator
This tool is for teachers not students. Then the real question is, how easy is
it to create a page like that?

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petervandijck
How did you get the .ly?

~~~
dustyreagan
<http://libyanspider.com/>

~~~
petervandijck
Thanks, hadn't seen that.

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Mz
I've emailed it to a couple of homeschool lists I belong to. Homeschoolers
love stuff like this.

Good luck with it.

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pedanticfreak
One way to monetize it is for standardized test preparation. Companies like
Kaplan charge an arm and a leg for sample tests.

Likewise you could align the questions with common curriculums and sell
separate fortifying study packs for primary and secondary school subjects.

I'd probably sell a 12-month pass to each individual subject for $1 and have a
set of achievements for each that will drag you through a variety of questions
multiple times to unlock them all. Hopefully you get the person to buy another
subject the next semester and so on.

All of this requires actually studying the standardized tests and curricula
and may need customization per state.

Your competitor in this space: <http://www.ixl.com/>

