
Show HN: Free Math, an offline React app for managing digital math homework - jaltekruse
http://freemathapp.org/
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nv-vn
(Slightly off-topic) It's really sad to me that as of yet there is nothing to
compete with paper and a pencil for math. I've used probably 10 different
programs/websites, lots of stand-alone software, LaTeX, drawing programs on
tablets, etc. for this during my time as a student. All of it feels poorly put
together because none of it solves any new problems. Drawing on a tablet is a
worse imitation of drawing on paper. TeX is just unwieldy for anything other
than writing down a final answer. Even the tools that are supposed to help
automate stuff almost always fail to do so. To be clear, I think there is a
lot of room for improvement within the next few years, especially when it
comes to touch-screen interaction and similar ideas. I'm just hoping someone
comes along and invents a decent product that feels just as intuitive as
drawing diagrams and writing equations that utilizes the power of the computer
strapped to it effectively (i.e. not just attempting to translate and simplify
my drawings to text).

~~~
confounded
For me, expressing math as code in a high-level language like R is _way_ more
intuitive, and faster to read/write/extend/verify than formulae.

This said, my context is always data-analysis/modeling. I’ve never felt
intimidated by code, though I spent many years being intimidated by certain
formulae. I’m fairly certain that I’d have pursued math to a much higher level
in school if the symbolic expressions were pseudo code I could mess with, but
this may just be my odd learning style.

~~~
Myrmornis
What proportion of the range of mathematical notation that professional
mathematicians use would you estimate you're able to express in R?

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confounded
In R, an inadequate one, but that’s not R’s goal.

I’m merely saying that in terms of symbolic representation of math, I’ve
personally found code or pseudo-code the fastest to understand (but I’m not a
professional mathematician!).

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ghufran_syed
What do you feel is the core problem you are trying to solve? And any concerns
about whether the effectiveness of student learning might be affected by using
an electronic tool instead of pen and paper? [1]
[https://www.npr.org/2016/04/17/474525392/attention-
students-...](https://www.npr.org/2016/04/17/474525392/attention-students-put-
your-laptops-away)

~~~
jaltekruse
For better or for worse, tech is being forced into classrooms by textbook
companies. At least this project emphasizes students working on good old
complete assignments, rather than tiny bite-sized activities. It is also free,
rather than $100 per student per year/semester.

Computers are okay at deciding if an answer is correct, but they are not good
tutors. Teachers can use Free Math to find the gems in their students work
that demonstrate their misunderstanding. Currently there is no way for them to
process all of the data and work produced by their students every day and have
access to this granularity of information.

I considered having an app that would take pictures of student work, but OCR
just seemed unrealistic for math. Bad handwriting and symbol ambiguity are
almost guaranteed to make any automated transcription of math work buggy.
Unlike with natural language, which you can produce on your approximate mobile
keyboard, there is no way to auto-correct a symbol or number based on the
context.

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tianshuo
Hi, I'm an investor from China. Instead of forcing students to use cumbersome
computerized inputs for equations, we are seeing multiple approaches to
revolutionalize how math homework is being marked in China, including
professional scanners in schools, taking photos using apps, writing equations
on iPads and using digital pens with special paper. The are multiple hard
parts for this process, such as OCR for complex symbols, solving the problem
itself using deep learning and theorem provers, and checking if the students
work per line is correct. I haven't seen anything like this in the US, other
than a few work in automatic solving the SAT exam(geosolver?).

~~~
nicodjimenez
See Gradescope
([https://gradescope.com/pricing](https://gradescope.com/pricing)) and Mathpix
([https://mathpix.com/](https://mathpix.com/)).

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zython
I'm sceptical that this will improve the classroom climate for that I'd have
to be developed with actual teachers and students. Digitalization just for the
sake of it is considered harmful.

Also I'd be wary to trust the similarity metric, IMO it is best to assume good
faith until you have evidence of cheating.

Anyway I think this can turn out great, like other have said, if it gets some
polishing here and there.

~~~
jaltekruse
I also want to assume good faith, but some people in education are far more
skeptical. I have been in meetings where those in charge or enforcing policy
said things like "officially we have to have logins for each student", when a
teachers said they preferred a simpler platform with a single quiz URL and
students putting in their own names to identify their submissions.

I think one of the major problems with other products, is that they come out
swinging with an accusation that all students cheat. Most tools these days
have unique problems per students, which can make it harder to go over an
assignment, because no one did the same problems.

I know there are varying opinions for what constitutes technology for
improvement of a process, vs tech for the sake of tech. I think the world
needs a digital way to represent symbolic math, it's one of the last complex
processes done daily by millions that is locked out of a computer. Making
something digital allows you to have undo/redo, and could eventually lead to a
lot of interesting productivity enhancements. Nearly no one writes large
amounts of text with pen anymore, because there is just so much more
flexibility with a word processor.

One of the few things that forces people back to pen and paper is if part of
what they need to write involve math formulas, because the current editors
that include equation editing aren't fast enough. This platform isn't
currently designed for mixing text and math, but it isn't too hard to add
soon.

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vittore
I think this is great! The offline first approach will clearly help to adopt
this in a case when there is not central class management system in school.

~~~
jaltekruse
Thanks! Definitely one of the hardest things to do getting products into a
school is having them approved for support by IT. This doesn't apply to
websites, unless they need to manage logins. While there would be some
workflow optimizations with a fully managed web app, most districts wouldn't
want to have a special gradebook for a single subject/department. This also
simplifies development for me early on, so I can focus on the rest of the user
experience without a bunch of dev ops work to keep the service up.

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LrnByTeach
Nice project, a claver way of skipping repeat write of previous math step work
and just do little edit for the NEXT step in the Math homework .

github [https://github.com/jaltekruse/Free-
Math](https://github.com/jaltekruse/Free-Math)

On a different note: I think for grading purposes of student math home work
which is done on a paper, Deep Learning neural network programs will be
advanced enough in 5 years that is by 2023 \- we will have a $200 flatbed
scanner in every class room, as student finish his school work/home work, she
can put the papers on scanner, it will sent scanned image to school server
which is running Deep Learning software which Grades and home work and record
scores in Database for teacher to view .

~~~
jaltekruse
I think this might be a way that such a project could be accelerated. Machine
learning is good, but math is extremely ambiguous. Symbols are re-used and
their orientation relative to other symbols changes their meaning. Some
problems want you to simplify, others want you to expand something. This
project at least removes symbol ambiguity in written work.

Even if you could make a computer understand how to solve a bunch of problems,
I'm not certain that blind machine learning would produce a good feedback
system for getting students back on course when they misunderstand something.
They could probably find some likely candidates where students may have made a
mistake, but I don't think anyone has tech anywhere near this right now.

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ivan_ah
Very cool idea. It's so much better to see the steps of the solution rather
than just ask for the final answer.

With a little polishing, this could be better/faster than solving homework on
paper!

It would be really interesting to somehow connect the homework notebook with
other "homework tools" like [http://live.sympy.org/](http://live.sympy.org/)
as calculator, or geogebra for geometry, or just a generic diagram editor for
doing diagrams (a bit like the scratchpad in khan academy exercises).

~~~
jaltekruse
I totally think this would be a good container format for these various
interactive tools. I think one of the reasons why they are not daily tools for
many classes is that so much of math is symbolic. So far symbolic math has
been confined to paper, even if a district decides to pay $100 per student per
year for access to one of the existing services that will nicely collect your
students final answers and machine grade them, students still do their work on
paper, and the software is oblivious to it.

On tools like Geogebra, I think we need more interactive tools, but they need
to exist alongside the symbolic work that everyone needs to do in most of
their classes. Managing a classroom full of students working on computers
(which can be distracting), is hard to justify if it is only displaying
supplemental material and you also need to transition to "normal homework
time".

I definitely need to add a generic diagram editor to make this useful for
classes like physics.

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JCharante
I wanted to take a look at the source code, but
[https://github.com/jaltekruse/Free-Math](https://github.com/jaltekruse/Free-
Math) is giving a 404.

~~~
jaltekruse
Sorry, I forgot to mark the repo as public. Should be fixed now.

The project is a bit messy, I still need to set up proper dependency
management and a build system. For now the app all lives in the index.html
file.

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donpark
Looks great. Aside from ideation and execution, presentation was great too.

~~~
jaltekruse
Thank you!

