June 17th, 2010
Get your game on with Math-Whizz this summer - the famous Whizz Adventure is now available!!
The challenge (if you’re up for it) - Help the Whizz Professor find his way out the jungle. You’ll be racing the clock while solving math puzzles, exploring mazes and finding your way out of tricky situations. Every level you complete unlocks a new piece of the story!
Log in to your Math-Whizz account to get started, or visit the Math-Whizz start page, create a free account and – if you like the look of Math-Whizz (we are confident you will) – sign up! Complete a few lessons to earn credits so you can go on the adventure!
Access the summer adventure by clicking the postcard that lands on your Whizz Bedroom doormat. This will load the Summer Adventure experience.
Good luck!
The comic book story
The adventure map
Tags: games, math tutoring, math-whizz, mathematics
Posted in Fun, Parents, Students | No Comments »
December 10th, 2009
This year’s Winter Adventure is live for Math-Whizzers!
Log into your Math-Whizz student account and check it out. For the first time ever all Math-Whizzers can try our Holiday Adventure. If you’re not a Math-Whizz user then there’s no reason not to give it a try.
Register for a free math tutoring account and get access to five free lessons and a taste of the figgy-pudding seasonal fun we have in store.
Tags: christmas, math games, math tutoring, secondary school
Posted in Fun, Parents, Students | No Comments »
December 3rd, 2009
WolframAlpha, the interesting ‘computational knowledge engine‘ launched earlier this year, has come up with a new doobry to interest lazy high-school and college math students everywhere…
Step-by-step math.
Users of the super-numerate search engine can henceforth select ’show steps’ after submitting a particular math problem for a solution.
Google super-users have long known that you can get answers to sometimes complex questions via the google search box - try typing ‘5 factorial’ or ‘12 mph in cm/s’ - but WolframAlpha takes that computational whizzery to the next level.
Needless to say, most Math-Whizzers shouldn’t (yet) need the assistance of this service in solving, and showing the working for, how to find the roots of quadratic equations. But I suspect this will rapidly become one of the most (ab)used tools in the young mathematician’s armoury.
Use at your peril!
Tags: Math, math problems, search engine, wolfram
Posted in Math, Parents, Schools, Students | No Comments »
October 27th, 2009
We never stop at Math-Whizz.
We’ve just added a fabulous new feature - Math Challenges - to our burgeoning range of tools proven to boost kids’ math abilities.
With Challenge, students can use their math skills to take on all-comers from across the globe. We have thousands of Maths-Whizz students in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Australasia.
Until yesterday, Maths-Whizzers had to share maths skills and a lesson history with one of their limited buddy list. Now the Maths-Whizz system automatically locates students with similar skills profiles to be challenged on completed lessons.
If you’re the parent of a Math-Whizzer, our latest feature will be perfect for helping you motivate your student, encourage some healthy competition, and boost their confidence in maths. Parents or teachers won’t need to worry about confidentiality, Whizzers cannot post comments to other challengers.
One thing to remember - with new Challenge we now only award credits for improving lesson scores or times in Replay. If you’re already scoring 100% with a fast time, it’s time to try another one of our 1200 animated math lessons.
Login now, or register for our online math tutor, to try out Challenge!
Posted in Fun, Math, Parents, Schools, Students | No Comments »
September 22nd, 2009
Jonathan Fields, over at Awake@TheWheel, asks aloud how one goes about engendering a love of learning. Read his great post, which he begins with the following questions:
Is it really possible to cultivate a “universal” love of learning or is love of learning topic driven?
Should kids be made to learn things they have no intrinsic interest in or passion for?
What’s the best way to incentivize learning in kids?
(From ‘Does Learning Have to Suck?’).
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Math, Parents, Schools, Students | No Comments »
September 16th, 2009
How do you work out how to play the opening chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’? Use Math, of course!
This is interesting research from the bleeding-edge interface of hard math and pop culture. The research, reported by William Weir, seems to show that the hitherto mysterious opening chord of this classic pop song can be identified, thanks to mathematician Jason Brown:
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: beatles, hard day's night, Math, math-whizz, mathematics, music, rock band
Posted in Fun, Math, Parents, Students | 1 Comment »
September 2nd, 2009
There’s a brand new pet in the Whizz Shop!
Get your hoots on with the Whizz Owl.
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Login to our math tutor at www.whizz.us/login.
If you don’t have an account, create an account there and start earning the credits to buy yourself this handsome winged beast!
Tags: math tutor, math-whizz, owl, pet
Posted in Fun, Parents, Students | No Comments »
August 20th, 2009
…And, naturally, the piece focuses on recent research into the effectiveness of math education.
The Economist blog title is a little misleading - it’s more about how to boost the wealth and quality of life of students with some additional math teaching. The effect was most pronounced in African-American boys.
TAKING more maths in school can make you richer, and not just because it helps you follow the stockmarket. A paper by Joshua Goodman, an economist, measures the impact of learning maths on income. He looked at a change in American schools following the 1983 “Nation at Risk” report. That study revealed that American students often follow a less rigorous curriculum than students in other countries. The result was new maths and reading requirements.
Mr Goodman has found that each extra required maths course raised the annual income of black males by 15%. (More reading classes had a negative or no effect on earnings.) More maths also increased the likelihood of young black men going to university and someday having a job requiring quantitative skills.
We’ve linked to Joshua Goodman’s research at our Math Research page.
Check it out, or find out more about the math tutoring we provide - tutoring that, if Goodman’s findings hold true, could make your child wealthier and more secure in adult life.
Tags: jobs, Math, secondary school
Posted in Math, Parents, Schools, Students | No Comments »
August 18th, 2009
Excuse the awful pun, but a post from Deb’s Math blog (new arrival in the Whizz blogroll, at right) pointed out the vogue for decent statisticians and mathematicians in the top companies.
She points to the recent New York Times piece ‘For Today’s Graduates, Just One word - Statistics‘, which quotes Peter Orzsag, White House economics honcho:
“Robust, unbiased data are the first step toward addressing our long-term economic needs and key policy priorities,”
This is no bad thing, and his attitude reflects the need at corporations to have expert number-crunchers on board. As Carrie Grimes, a statistics expert and analyst at Google, points out:
“Even an improvement of a percent or two can be huge, when you do things over the millions and billions of times we do things at Google,”
At a somewhat smaller level, we’ve found the benefits in good statistical analysis of the behavior of our tens of thousands of Math-Whizz students. Some of this research is summarized on our Math-Whizz Research Page.
In any case, we’d hope that our online math tutor can help get children started with elementary statistics in particular, and math in general.
Stats is one of the subjects that most commonly trips up adults, and knowing good from bad statistics is important for weeding out honest information from that which has been expelled from the fundament of a particular male bovine ruminant.
Tags: About.com, elementary statistics, jobs, m, nytimes, statistics
Posted in Math, Parents, Schools, Students | No Comments »
August 14th, 2009
The combination of Lego, the obsession of this writer’s early years, and math, the preoccupation of his working days, means there IS ONLY ONE GIFT that I will consider this year - the Lego Calculator. (via Rex - site not always suitable for minors).
We suggest young, aspiring mathematicians everywhere do the following:
- Buy Lego to build whole new worlds out of plastic bricks;
- Subscribe to Math-Whizz to learn the most important skills you’ll ever need;
- Use your ‘Building Blocks Calculator‘ to calculate the trajectory of your Mars rocket when you’re a top-notch scientist and pioneering astronaut in twenty-five years’ time.
Job done!
Tags: calculator, lego, mathematics, NASA
Posted in Fun, Math, Students | No Comments »
