Doing Math on a Mac
Doing math can be a big problem for students who can’t write or work with rulers and protractors and compasses on their desks. It’s hard to type math problems in a regular word processor, and it’s impossible to work out “protractor and ruler” type problems with most computer setups. Here are some programs which can help students do this type of maths on a computer:
Soulver
This program is an odd hybrid of a calculator and a word processor:
Soulver is a new kind of calculator application which uses a simple yet powerful word-processor style interface instead of the traditional “button” approach to doing math.
Most helpfully for a student, you can edit things anywhere in the document and Soulver will recalculate answers as you go, and you can save your work and come back to it later.
Website: Soulver
Little Geometry
LittleGeometry is a very simple geometry toolkit. It has been designed to help children with disabilities to make their geometry exercises.
This program literally puts images of a ruler, compass, and set squares on the screen so they can be moved and tilted into appropriate positions. This would be appropriate to use with scanned worksheets showing ruler-and-compass type problems such as measuring line length or angles.
Website: LittleGeometry
Further…
For students who may wish to advance their math studies past about an average 16 year old’s level (10th year of schooling), it may be worth looking into a more complex system. Two which may be appropriate are:
- LaTeX. This markup system is used by professional level mathematicians. It doesn’t help with the math in any way, but allows equations and mathematical formulae of virtually any complexity to be created purely by typing. This would be of a great aid to switch users in typing mathmatical equations.
- MathML. This is a markup system designed for putting mathematical equations on the web, but it is also useful for marking up mathematics in such a way that it can usefully be read out by a screen reader such as VoiceOver.
- Ricky Buchanan
um… i have a question, For math class i have to write fractions like on word. How do I set up the fractions and stuff, like is there a setting or anything that can let me do this? Is this possible on any computer?
@Lacy: I suggest you get the program MathType 6 which is just like Word’s equation editor but can be used as a separate program too. Let me know how you go, and best of luck!
Hello there! Thank you for the tip on this program, I will try it out on my sons MacBook. The geometry program also looks very cool because you can measure distances on scanned documents that have no legend! Thanks again
@Voos: I’d never thought of using the geometry program like that - it’s a cool creative idea! We like thinking outside the box, around here
MathMagic is another great equation editor, with well designed GUI and support for MathML and LaTeX if you are familiar with any of these, that you looks very much like MathType.
MathMagic works well with iWork Pages and Keynote so that you can bring math equations and symbols back and forth for inserting and re-editing.
They had a special offer for those students(or their teachers/parents) with learning difficulties. Not sure if this is still available but you may ask.