Figure - math for the right side of your brain

[acr1378]

This project is a bit outside of the box for a typical Unity project…we would love your feedback!

What is Figure?
Figure is an interactive algebra tool that brings 21st century learning to the classroom. Figure makes math come to life in a way that stimulates students’ right-brain thinking. In this day and age, students are more excited by their technological devices than a pencil and paper–Figure brings algebra to the forefront of technology, reducing math anxiety and making math FUN! With Figure Math, teachers can lead a collaborative approach to all concepts ranging from Pre-Algebra, Algebra 1, Algebra 2, Physics Concepts, and even graphing complicated functions.

With an intuitive drag-and-drop system, students can explore equations without fear of making mistakes:

Figure’s sophisticated math engine takes students from basic Arithmetic through Algebra I and II and beyond:

New graphing features allow students to visualize complicated functions and adjust parameters in realtime to gain a better understanding of how functions work:

What’s New?
Up until recently we have focused on the mobile app version of Figure. We are now creating a school version of Figure intended for teachers to use in the classroom. This requires porting Figure to WebGL, and building a teacher-student dashboard with a communication layer between custom menus in the browser and the WebGL canvas. We are fleshing out the browser content of the web app to engage students and provide teachers with the material they need to effectively teach mathematics using Figure.

Our Ask…
Play around with our new Classroom Beta project at http://classroombeta.figuremath.com. To access this, you will need to enter this Class Code: ZW2BQTT

We are looking for feedback from both a user’s and a developer’s perspective. We are constantly looking for new suggestions about features and content that would improve the user experience. But we would love your feedback from a technical perspective. In particular, we’d appreciate your input on the following:

• General Impressions: tell us what you think!
• Optimization: how can we improve framerates and reduce CPU/GPU demands?
• Architecture: what is the ideal back-end architecture for hosting a Unity WebGL game?
• Communication Layer: tips on seamlessly communicating between the browser and WebGL canvas?
• Bugs, Glitches, and General Annoyances: does it work?

And, of course, any other comments you have are welcome!

Reply here or contact us at info@figuremath.com. You can also learn more at www.figuremath.com.

[eaque1]

fantastic!! Helps understand how it works!! it might be a revolution :)!!! I see a huge success
if i had the money i would invest !!! will definitely have a look and will give feedback

[Martin_H]

Personally I doubt this would have helped me in school. In a way this makes it even more abstract in my opinion because you’re able to execute steps without understanding what or why you’re doing and I could see the approach leading to both trial-and-erroring yourself to a solution, or backing yourself into a corner.
I could see some benefit in being able to grind through a higher number of practice equations in a shorter amount of time by removing some of the tedious writing and calculating, but I don’t see it as inherently easier to understand. And you’d already have to have good understanding of what’s going on before that shortcut makes sense imho.

I think an improvement would be displaying the kind of “history” of operations that you perform on the equation in the exact same way a student would be required to do it on paper when they solve it the old-school way.

Sorry if some of my terminology is off, I never had math classes in English.

I think the thing that would have helped me most back in school, would have been actual engaging real-world examples for where all that stuff could be useful. Most textbook examples of people buying ridiculous amounts of groceries or driving somewhere where you need to calculate travel times and whatnot seemed to be utterly contrived and useless. And then when we leave school and are hit with real-world math-related usecases, it’s 90%+ stuff we’ve never heard about once in math class. I always thought that’s ridiculous in so many ways.

P.S.: in the first animation that you posted here you’re rounding a fraction without making it clear that rounding is taking place and it no longer is the precise same number. I would consider that a flaw.