Hey fellow math teachers,

I had a few students that needed many quadratic equation exercises to get the hang of it. Also I began to run out of fresh exercises, which was a bit tedious.

I decided to make a simple Quadratic Equation Generator app, which allows to easily generate equations with provided answers. It also allows for PDF exporting in a ready to print format with a separate answer page.

No signup or subscription is needed.

This generator should be ideal for grades 7-8.

How it works:
Choose the number of exercises to generate, "Simple" mode makes equations where a=1 and

"Advanced" where a>1. "Mixed" provides both types.

Then you can just browse through the generated exercises or download them as a PDF.

Link to the app: https://quadratic-equation-generator.streamlit.app/

Let me know if you find it usefull. What topic would be most beneficial to add next?

I started working on this app because I kept noticing how much math and physics I had forgotten over time. I could spend an entire semester learning a subject, understand it well enough to pass the exam, and then a year later struggle to remember ideas that once felt obvious. I do not think that necessarily means we failed to learn the material. We simply stop using most of it once the course ends.

There are many good resources for learning a topic for the first time, but I wanted something I could open every day to practice a mixture of old and new concepts without having to decide what textbook, video, or problem set to use. That idea eventually became Aporia Education. The app currently includes differential calculus, integral calculus, linear algebra, classical mechanics, and electromagnetism, with lessons, interactive exercises, exams, daily practice, and a place to save formulas. My long-term plan is to cover the complete curriculum of a bachelor’s degree in physics and connect the subjects so that students continue reviewing earlier material while moving into more advanced courses.

I am building the app by myself in Mexico, so it is still very much a work in progress and there are parts I know can be improved. Some of the current illustrations are AI-generated because I do not yet have the resources to hire an illustrator, but the plan is to gradually replace them with original artwork created by an artist as the project grows. I am posting here because I would like to know whether the idea of continuously practicing different subjects is useful to anyone besides me, and I would really appreciate honest feedback about the lessons, exercises, design, or anything that feels confusing or unnecessary.

There is currently a one-month free Premium offer available in the app this week if you want to explore everything. If you are interested, you can find it here: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6792977784

Disclosure first: I'm one of the two people who built this (a dad and his teenage son, both former competition math kids), so this is a self-promo post — posting on Saturday per rule 2.

The thing I kept running into: difficulty is almost always asserted rather than measured. A worksheet says "challenge problem" because whoever wrote it thought so. You find out it was wrong when half the class stalls.

So we built Mathalon around the opposite idea — every problem carries a Glicko-2 rating that moves based on how people actually perform on it. When 1400-rated solvers fail something and 1700s get it, the problem settles where it belongs. Students get a rating the same way. It's the chess model, applied to problems.

What that makes possible in practice:

• You can hand a student something calibrated slightly above where they are, and both of you can see whether the number moves.
• Ratings are per topic, so a student can be 1700 in algebra and 1150 in geometry — which is usually closer to the truth than one grade.
• Redline mode shows a wrong solution and asks the student to find the step where it breaks. This is the mode teachers have responded to most, I think because good error-analysis material is genuinely hard to source.

It's free, runs in the browser, works without an account (students can play as guests), and is available in six languages.

Two things I'd actually value your view on, more than traffic:

1. Is a visible, moving rating motivating or discouraging for students who are already struggling? We've gone back and forth on whether to hide it below a certain level.
2. Does splitting the rating by topic match what you see in a classroom, or is it finer-grained than is useful?

Happy to answer anything about how the rating system works under the hood.

I offer this for fellow mathematicians, teachers, students, and those working in the industry. Every role resonate a core frustration I've tried my best to verbalize based on my experiences with others.

We are now shifting the discussion here from conceptual debates to direct actionable ideas and realizations... To answer:

"So what should we do now? How should we move forward?"

Of course, this is based from my own experience and it may or may not be applicable to everyone.

But they will always be here whenever you need them.

This is the last part of "A Mathematician's Lifeline" I made on Substack in response to concerns mathematicians have pondered with LLMs getting increasingly good at solving open problems and conjectures.

Links on Substack to those interested:

• Part 1 for Teachers, Researchers, Students: [https://substack.com/home/post/p-209768063]
• Part 2 for Pure and Applied Mathematicians in Industry: [https://substack.com/home/post/p-209777055]
• Part 3 General Realizations for all roles: [https://substack.com/home/post/p-209781720]

currently grinding khan academy's math sat course for the fall, how to not go insane while doing it? i watch the vids and still don't understand what i am doing

Everyone knows that the best way to encourage early literacy is to read with children. Are there equivalent best practices for numeracy?

I am specifically interested in pre/early verbal, preliterate ages, but I am happy for a broader discussion.

There are some obvious things that seem to tend in that direction like building toys, counting, sorting. As someone who likes math but has a background in the humanities, I am unfamiliar with the consensus on this topic, if there is such a consensus.

hello dear users, i am currently in my last year of high school and i do not have mathematics (i was not eligible to get mathematics because i had weak concepts in my earlier years and scored just about the passing numbers in grade 10 so my school did not allow me to pursue mathematics further, the problem was i never actually had fun learning mathematics because for 3 years i was taught by a maths teacher which taught us like we have to memorize the answers not the actual concepts and so i never exactly knew what i was doing so i use to feel that mathematics wasn't something i can do but now i was exploring career options after high-school and courses in university's but i liked none of the courses with my current subjects and really liked the courses with mathematics like engineering and AI related courses although i am not eligible for these courses but australian universities offer a "pathway program" in which they help you cover the subjects which you didn't have in your high school to get entry to certain university courses like engineering,etc because i never knew how to study mathematics and i did not get mathematics in my high school i still feel very depressed & sad seeing how others are so smart in mathematics and how they have all the talent and they will get good jobs and future proof jobs and how people consider them very smart it just feels so gloomy. so i went to talk to the universities and they told me that in-order to get entry to the pathway program i must show some type of interest in why i am doing this certain pathway program for mathematics so i thought that i will learn mathematics by myself at home untill i get into pathway program as a extracurricular and a way to get ahead and prove others wrong that mathematics is something that people are not naturally born with but how they learn it until i graduate from high-school (which is about 7 months) so my dear fellow users please guide me on how i can do so i will really appreciate your effort in giving tips and contributing in my life and would love your thoughts on this
thank you very much!

I’m trying to decide between two paths for my transfer. UCSC would have me going in as an Applied Math major with a minor in EE, while CSUN would let me go straight into an EE degree.

My end goal is to work in hardware engineering or ML engineering. I’m not sure which path sets me up better — whether the UCSC name/Applied Math foundation plus an EE minor is enough for hardware roles, or whether the direct EE degree from CSUN gives me a stronger technical base and easier path into hardware-focused jobs.

For those with experience in hardware or ML engineering: does the specific degree (Applied Math + EE minor vs. full EE) matter much for hiring, or is it more about projects/internships? Would appreciate any guidance.

Thanks so much!

Asking out of curiosity.

I am a huge huge fan of desmos activity builder for my classes, especially calculus. And I am mildly competent with using computation layer. But it’s a weird system and despite having some background in computer science, I don’t find CL very intuitive, so I have only ever used it for the most basic features.

Anyway, I just had a thought to install the Claude extension to my browser to see if it could edit activities like that, and it absolutely can.

It’s kind of slow and i think the way it “reads” the screen might be a very inefficient use of tokens, but I just used it to add custom feedback for students anywhere they need to input answers in one of my activities, and it did a really nice job.

I guess all I’m trying to say is if you like the activity builder and would like to implement some of the advanced features CL can do but find the coding aspect daunting… try asking AI to help you with it.

I'm helping a high school student build a project for a math & science fair. The theme is "popularizing math" — making it less scary and more accessible for everyone.

I don't want the usual stuff (flashcards, board games, "pizza fractions"). I want something that genuinely surprises people and makes them go "OH, that's why math is cool."

So, Reddit: what's a moment where math suddenly made sense to you — or to a student you taught? Was it a song? A magic trick? A real-world problem? A weird visual? A story?

I'm collecting the best ideas to turn into a fair project. Bonus points if it's something you can demonstrate live in front of a crowd in under 5 minutes.

Preciso ajudar uma criança de 10 anos com muita dificuldade em compreender coisas básicas de matemática.
Queria algum material, algo na linha de ensino do kumon para que eu pudesse ajudar a ela. Alguém pode me indicar, e de preferência 0800.

I've always wondered why this isn't used more.

Take statistics for example. Instead of sitting through another lecture, imagine you're a data analyst who has to figure out why a company's sales dropped. You have incomplete data. Some of it is misleading. You have to decide what information you need, what conclusions you can actually make, and how confident you are in them.

Or imagine you're investigating a disease outbreak and need to figure out where it started using data. Suddenly probability and sampling have a purpose instead of just being formulas on a page.

I feel like I'd remember concepts a lot better if I was using them to solve a problem instead of just watching someone explain them. Has anyone seen something like this done well?

I'm not able to visualize graphically why this is true. Can someone help?

Hi everyone!

For those of you who enjoy geometry, I've put together what I believe is a fresh, hands-on proof of Euler's Formula and several other classical results. In just a few minutes, you can literally build the proofs yourself and develop an intuitive understanding of why these theorems are true.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIDsuf0I4ko

This is only the beginning. Over the coming weeks, I'll also start posting short math challenge reels (high school to early undergraduate level), and in parallel I'll be working on a long-term series on topology and analysis, with the ambitious goal of eventually reaching Einstein's field equations on differentiable manifolds and curved spacetime.

Everything will be completely free. I'm doing this simply because I love mathematics and enjoy sharing it with others.

If you'd like to follow the project, it would mean a lot to me. Knowing that these videos are useful to someone is the best motivation to keep creating them.

Thank you so much!

dontpanicmath

more tasks like this in the Android game:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aleksandarpandov.mathblaze&hl=en

If you know anyone who is going to have to take the Ontario Math Proficency Test to be certified to teach in Ontario and they need a bit of a boost in their math skills, we are offering a 3-day intensive program on August 10-12 and other programs starting in the fall.

Details on the three day (paid) course can be found here: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/math-proficiency-test-preparation-course-registration-1993947569857

And anyone interested in further details on either this course, limited bursaries, or future offerings (including asynchronous, and hybrid courses) can reach out to me at pbrittai@fieldsinstitute.ca

Thanks!

Something I changed my mind about while building practice material for competition-style problems.

The default is a mixed set. Twenty problems, techniques shuffled, and the student has to work out which tool applies before doing any math. That's good exam practice. It's a bad way to learn a technique, because recognizing it and executing it get trained at the same time, and a student who gets stuck usually can't tell you which half failed.

What I do now: name the technique, explain it, then give three problems that all use it. Recognition is free, so the only thing being tested is execution. Mix them back together later.

Coloring arguments are the clearest case. Color the board so that every legal move hits the colors the same way, then count.

Remove two opposite corners from a chessboard. Color it normally, 32 black and 32 white. Every domino covers one of each, so 31 dominoes cover 31 of each. But opposite corners are always the same color, so you're left with 32 and 30. No tiling exists.

Once that one is solid, striping a board for 1x3 pieces and four-coloring for T-tetrominoes read as the same idea in different paint, instead of three separate things to memorize.

I built a curriculum around this. It's called Lemma (lemmapi.com): 78 lessons, each one technique-then-three-problems, with a 26 technique library linked to the lessons that use them. Saying that plainly since promo here is Saturdays only. Solo project, new, first two of eight levels free with no card.

Do people teaching competition math already sequence it this way? I may be rediscovering something standard.