The Math Solver

Not an answer machine. A tutor on the phone that walks a student through their own exercise, step by step: it checks, hints, and waits.

The product that made the Kernel necessary, and is now built with it.

What it is

A student photographs an exercise out of their own textbook. The solver recognises it and guides them through that exact problem, one step at a time, on a phone. The student does the work.

Fig. 1 — The student's own exercise, worked on the phone: two steps established, the third being typed, the idea behind it waiting to one side.

They find the values the question gives, choose the formula, put the numbers where they belong and type each result on a keypad. The solver checks each step. When one goes wrong it says so and offers a hint that narrows the path without handing over the answer. What has already been established stays on screen while the next step is taken, so the thread of the reasoning is never lost.

If the student wants the idea behind a step, a card explains it. They open it themselves; nothing is pushed at them. Reaching the end of the exercise with the understanding they have today counts. The deeper idea waits for the moment they ask for it.

Why it exists

Help with homework depends on someone being there, with the time, the patience and the maths to hand. Often nobody is. And when someone is, the help itself can become the problem: between a child and an adult who badly wants them to succeed, an exercise turns into a tension neither of them chose, and the explaining runs on past the point where the child stopped listening.

A good tutor works differently. They let the student set the pace, say only what the next step needs, and carry none of the fear about what happens if the maths goes badly. That pace, when the focus is there, is often faster than the helper expects. The solver is built to guide the way that tutor would.

It is not a homework-answer machine, and it is not built to be mistaken for one. Anything that hands over an answer teaches the student to ask again tomorrow.

It is being built to cover the core exercise types of secondary-school mathematics, geometry, expressions and proportional reasoning among them, one type at a time, because each type is designed rather than generated.

Mathematics is the same everywhere; the way it is taught is not. So the solver carries those differences rather than flattening them: the decimal comma or point a country uses, and the layout its schools expect for written methods.

What rebuilding it three times taught me

It exists in its current form after three earlier attempts. The code grew unwieldy, then the interface did: so many near-identical pieces that most of my working day went on avoiding duplication rather than adding anything. Progress guaranteed more mess. Starting again was easier than building on, and I did that three times.

The fourth attempt is not a fourth attempt at the same thing. It is the first one built on a system that keeps the work coherent while it grows, and that system exists because this product made the case for it. Fixing the fourth version would have bought time; fixing the way I build bought everything after it.

Where it is going

It will be available worldwide, in a number of languages. An alpha version is under way.

A site for it is coming soon, where anyone who wants to try the alpha can put their name down.