Brilliant – An app review

Over the weekend I read this post by Jo Morgan (@mathsjem). In it she refers to a website “brilliant.org” which offers some brilliant stuff to be used in maths teaching. I liked the look of it so I set off to investigate and when I accessed the site I was presented with a pop up asking if I wanted to download the app, which I promptly did.

When I accessed the app I was presented with a number of mini quizzes which covered a range of early KS3 material, but on further exploration I discovered a treasure trove of fantastic questions and explanations of topics ranging from very basic up to degree level.

On top of this there are some fantastic puzzles to solve and the app tracks what you have done and how well you have on it. I found it really fun, I enjoyed testing my knowledge on some of tge further mechanics and am looking forward to attempting some of the puzzles.

I think this app is brilliant for anyone who loves maths, whether they be studying it at school, at university, teach it or just enjoy keeping themselves smart.

There is also the chance to subscribe to additional content, I haven’t yet but I am tempted. The additional content seems to be more worked solutions to the quizzes, but I think I’ll see how much I use the app before I upgrade.

I do love the prices too, it’s £tau pounds a month, but if you sign up for a year they reduce it to £pi – a lovely touch.

A great app, if you love maths, get it and if you’re studying maths it will help immensely.

I’d also advise following the app page on Facebook, you get a constant stream of little beauties like this:

Quadratic Equation Solver – the app

Earlier today Will Davies (@notonlyahatrack) tweeted at me that Phil Boor (@Phil_Boor) had had his first app published, “Quadratic Equation Solver“.

I quickly downloaded it, and I quite like it. It does exactly what it days on the tin, it solves quadratic equations. I’m not sure there’s a huge market for it to be honest, especially with the other maths apps that are available that solve quadratic equations and do lots of other things as well.

One love the look of it, and how quickly it solves quadratics, but I did find it slightly annoying that you have to put 1 in as a coefficient. That you can’t change the + symbols to – symbols so have to add negative coefficients.

I was also a little disappointed that it didn’t give me the formula when I tried to solve ax^2 + bx + c = 0.

It amused me that for this:

Expresses the answer -1 as -3+rt4 and -5 as -1-rt4!

All in all, a lovely little free app, if you want one that only solves quadratic equations. If you’re after one that does this (albeit in a slightly less cool way) and more, try the free “mathematics” or the very reasonably priced “Wolfram Alpha“.

Mathematics – the app

A while ago I blogged about the Wolfram Alpha app, which I love and which has been the limit of my mathematical apps on my phone since. I haven’t really needed anything else. The other day, however, I was on the play store trying to find a decent app which would allow me to type maths easily. I failed in my search (if you know of a good one for android do let me know!) but I did find this app called “Mathematics – for android” by daboApps.

The app was free so I downloaded it (along with many others) to see what they could do. Most of them I deleted fairly quickly, but this one is one I feel could be extremely useful. It does some of the things Wolfram Alpha does, but it isn’t a like for like, there are things WA does that Mathematics doesn’t, and vice versa. Here is a screenshot of the menu screen:

What you can’t see are two sections titled “Calculator” and “Calculations”. Which are excellent high powered calculators.

There are also many other functions that I’m just beginning to explore. There functions section will plot and solve polynomials, differentiate, integrate etc:

It will solve equations, even systems of equations:

The stats section has these tests:

Which seem easy to use. I’ve not managed to fully explore yet but I had a little play:

So far, I’d certainly say it isn’t bad at all for a free app!