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

by dustyreagan • 16 years ago

28 49 16 years ago

jey• 16 years ago

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.)

dustyreagan11• 16 years ago

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.

dustyreagan11• 16 years ago

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.

acangiano• 16 years ago

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

dustyreagan11• 16 years ago

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.

iterationx• 16 years ago

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.

dustyreagan11• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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

mindcrime2• 16 years ago

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.

dustyreagan11• 16 years ago

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.

mindcrime2• 16 years ago

That sounds pretty awesome to me. Build it and I'd probably sign up.

pbhjpbhj2• 16 years ago

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?

AndrewWarner• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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.

mayank• 16 years ago

> Offer multiple skill levels.

I think there might be a market for GRE-level math questions. If your site loads quickly and is generally snappy, test takers could stop by for 5 minute lunch sessions.

rgarcia• 16 years ago

> Offer multiple skill levels.

You could also start with easy questions and have it slowly adapt to harder/easier questions as you get questions right or wrong (maybe accounting for speed as well).

pixcavator• 16 years ago

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

pkulak• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

Another good option: only integer answers.

Xk• 16 years ago

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

habitatforus• 16 years ago

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 _________.

pbhjpbhj2• 16 years ago

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?

njs12345• 16 years ago

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

patrickaljord• 16 years ago

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

swalberg• 16 years ago

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.

SHOwnsYou• 16 years ago

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.

rednum• 16 years ago

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.

dustyreagan11• 16 years ago

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.)

xfs2• 16 years ago

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

sz• 16 years ago

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

xfs2• 16 years ago

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

achompas• 16 years ago

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.

jonpaul• 16 years ago

I have the same problem using Chrome on Linux.

dustyreagan11• 16 years ago

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.)

petervandijck3• 16 years ago

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

petervandijck3• 16 years ago

How did you get the .ly?

dustyreagan11• 16 years ago

http://libyanspider.com/

petervandijck3• 16 years ago

Thanks, hadn't seen that.

Dove• 16 years ago

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?

PaulHoule• 16 years ago

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.

ilconsigliere2• 16 years ago

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?

dustyreagan11• 16 years ago

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

ilconsigliere2• 16 years ago

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

pedanticfreak• 16 years ago

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/

some1else• 16 years ago

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.

chad_oliver• 16 years ago

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.

dustyreagan11• 16 years ago

Awesome input! Thanks! :)

Mz• 16 years ago

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

Good luck with it.

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

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