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Daily iPhone App: Quento is a spelling game, but with math
Quento was recommended to me just recently by someone I met at Macworld or 360iDev, and unfortunately, I don't remember who told me about it. But the recommendation was great, and now I'm passing it on to you. As you can see above, Quento is a math-based puzzle game, where you use a grid of numbers and symbols to try and put them together into a target number. The game's interface is actually half the fun -- like the popular word game Letterpress, Quento is very stylishly designed, and as you complete each target number in the puzzle, it gets replaced in the menu above. You can swipe the little menu right or left to go up to harder difficulty modes, or down to a "free play" mode (where you just get a number to make, and you can use any combination to make it). The game is casual, obviously, but it's not necessarily easy -- at times, I found myself racking my brain to try and line the numbers up right. But there's always an answer in there, and no matter what your math knowledge is like, Quento does a great job of rewarding concentration and smart gameplay. You can pick it up now as a free, universal app.
MIT prof and student discover algorithm for predicting trending Twitter topics
Predicting the future of Twitter's trending topics is, as of right now, an impossibility. But two folks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology may have cracked the code with an algorithm they're saying predicts -- with 95 percent accuracy -- the topics that will trend in the next hour and a half. The prediction has even been calculated as high as four to five hours ahead of time with the same level of accuracy. Not too bad! Of course, beyond impressing friends with the predictions, the algorithm has direct implications for the likes of Twitter itself -- being able to sell ads against trending topics could benefit the social media company enormously in its ongoing quest to monetize. At any rate, it's distinctly less dangerous sounding than the last idea we heard involving Twitter and predictions. The algorithm will be presented next week at MIT's Interdisciplinary Workshop on Information and Decision in Social Networks, should you wish to dig into the nitty gritty of the math behind the madness.
iPads seem to raise classroom math scores in charter school study
Earlier this year the folks who created the YourTeacher math tutoring and test prep system teamed up with KIPP Academy to gauge how well the iPad performs in the classroom. As noted by Jim Dalrymple of The Loop, the results are overwhelmingly in favor of the iPad. Between February 2012 and May 2012, a group of 8th grade math students in Houston used the YourTeacher Algebra 1 iBooks instead of their hardcover counterparts. The teachers used the iPads to create a flipped classroom in which students spent most of their learning time on the iPad (80 percent) while they were at home. This let teachers use the classroom time for advanced, one-on-one instruction. When compared to the control group that received traditional classroom instruction, the iPad group showed significant improvement in their math scores. The summary report on the pilot program says, Overall, the percentage of students who rated either proficient or advanced (the 'passing' rate) was 49% percent higher in the 'flipped classrooms' using the iPads than in the traditional classrooms with no iPads. The difference was most pronounced in the percentage of students rated as 'advanced,' which was 150% higher in the 'flipped classrooms.' This may be a small-scale study, but it is one of many recent results that suggest the iPad could benefit school-aged children as young as kindergarten. [Via The Loop]
Alt-week 7.28.12: social mathematics, Pluto's moons and humans-on-a-chip
Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days. It's a beautiful world we live in. And, while the sweet and romantic part is debatable, strange and fantastic is not. Our universe is one populated by non-planetary celestial bodies with their own non-planetary satellites, high school social hierarchies based on predictable mathematical formulas and military-funded "gut-on-a-chips." It's a weird place filled with weird stories, and we just can't get enough of it. So, what has the last seven days brought us from the fringes of science and tech? Keep reading after the break to find out. This is alt-week.
Researchers out faux product review groups with a lot of math and some help from Google
Ever consulted a crowdsourced review for a product or service before committing your hard-earned funds to the cause? Have you wondered how legit the opinions you read really are? Well, it seems that help is on the way to uncover paid opinion spamming and KIRF reviews. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have released detailed calculations in the report Spotting Fake Reviewer Groups in Consumer Reviews -- an effort aided by a Google Faculty Research Award. Exactly how does this work, you ask? Using the GSRank (Group Spam Rank) algorithm, behaviors of both individuals and a group as a whole are used to gather data on the suspected spammers. Factors such as content similarity, reviewing products early (to be most effective), ratio of the group size to total reviewers and the number of products the group has been in cahoots on are a few bits of data that go into the analysis. The report states, "Experimental results showed that GSRank significantly outperformed the state-of-the-art supervised classification, regression, and learning to rank algorithms." Here's to hoping this research gets wrapped into a nice software application, but for now, review mods may want to brush up on their advanced math skills. If you're curious about the full explanation, hit the source link for the full-text PDF.
Physicist uses math to get out of a traffic ticket, publishes findings
When most folks get ticketed for running a stop sign, most people wind up writing the court a check. UC San Diego physicist Dmitri Krioukov wrote a mathematical paper instead. Rather than throw his fallible human opinion on the mercy of the court, Krioukov uses a series of equations and graphs to prove that the accusing officer confused his car's real space-time trajectory "for a trajectory of a hypothetical object moving at approximately constant linear speed without stopping at the stop sign." In other words, the officer was wrong, but Krioukov stresses that it isn't the officer's fault. "This mistake is fully justified," he writes, pointing to the math. "As a result of this unfortunate coincidence, the O's perception of reality did not properly reflect reality." And to think, you probably never thought you'd use this kind of math in the real world.
Minds of Modern Mathematics from IBM available for iPad
Math is one of those disciplines that has a long and colorful history. If you want to learn more about the great math minds of the past, you should download Minds of Modern Mathematics from IBM. The multimedia-rich app is a timeline that shows the history of math from 1000 BC to the 1950s. The iPad app is inspired by a 50-foot long wall tribute to math that was on display during the IBM-sponsored Mathematica exhibition held in 1961. The original wall tribute was designed by celebrated American designers, Charles and Ray Eames. The app has three core views that let you see the development of math over the millennia, browse exciting events that happened in the last century or swipe through a 3D chronological view that lets you walk through math history one event at a time. The app is filled with detailed biographies about famous mathematicians and has almost 500 high-resolution photos of historic artifacts. The Minds of Modern Mathematics is available for free from the iOS App Store. It'll run on an iPad with iOS 3.2 or later.
Friday Favorite: A bushel of educational apps for learning fun
A friend on Twitter asked me the other day if I had a list of the educational apps I have on my iPad. With all the reviews I have done, I was ashamed to admit that I've never taken the time to list those apps that I use on a regular basis with my children. I reached out to the other writers at TUAW and asked them the same question. Together, we compiled a list of our favorite learning apps for children, and wow, what a list. The apps are presented below in no particular order. NXTapp ($0.99) Khan Academy (Free) Elmo Loves ABCs ($4.99) Where's my water? ($0.99) Simple Physics ($0.99) Simply Find It ($1.99) SparkleFish ($0.99, 99-cent in-app purchases) My First Wood Puzzles: Dinosaurs (Free, $1.99 in-app purchase) Zoo Sounds ($1.99) Paper by FiftyThree (Free, in-app purchases of $2.99 for tools and $7.99 for everything) Plants HD for the iPad ($1.99) Discovery Kids Sharks ($4.99) Minecraft-Pocket Edition ($6.99; more game-ish, but building with blocks is learning, no?) Articulation Station (Free; sound packs are $2.99 to $5.99, full app is $49) Letter of the Day Interactive Activities ($1.99) AniMatch ($0.99) iBuildABCs ($0.99) Junior Bingo ($0.99) Rocket Speller (Free) Wood Puzzle USA Map ($1.99) Word Bingo ($0.99) Math Bingo ($0.99) Beginning Sounds Interactive Game ($0.99) Motion Math Hungry Fish (Free, in-app purchases from $2.99 up to $8.99) Letter Quiz ($1.99) Phonics Tic Tac Toe Interactive Game (Free) Sentence Maker (Free) Flashcards+ (Free, in-app purchases to get new voices) Word Jigsaw (Free, in-app purchases to get extra hints and unlock all the levels) Monster Coloring Book ($2.99) Math Tables ($1.99) Word Search + (Free, in-purchase of $1.99 for premium version) Missing Link (Free, in-app purchases for hints and extra levels) Bookworm ($2.99) If you have any educational apps you enjoy, please share them with us in the comments.
The Physics of Angry Birds updated for Space
Ah, remember the early days of Angry Birds? Back when we were still fascinated by those frustrated feathered creatures and the hogs they so vehemently want to take down? That's when writer and physicist Rhett Allain published his original "Physics of Angry Birds" article, which used the original game to examine some real-life physics theory and equations. Now, Allain is back to take a look at the Angry Birds Space sequel/spinoff/update and the physics contained therein. As you might imagine, there's quite a bit to work with here -- the Space version includes gravity around smaller planets, so Allain is able to actually go through the various equations that govern movement between two different bodies. It's a nice long read (especially interesting if you're into math and physics, of course), but basically Allain finds that the birds aren't really dealing with gravity, just a coded representation of such. And perhaps more interestingly, Allain also says that the Space version of the birds contains pretty much, in a physics sense, the same slingshot as the original version. This makes sense (it's easier to code, obviously, having already done it once), but it also means that even though birds are floating through space in the spinoff, and flying across the ground in the first title, they're still starting with that same initial speed and force in both. [via MacStories]
App turns Android tabs into math tools for the visually impaired (video)
Two high school students are taking part in a bit of an experiment at Vanderbilt University. The college's Medical and Electromechanical Design Laboratory (MED Lab) is working on an Android app that turns tablets into a teaching aid for the visually impaired. Areas of math that rely heavily on visual elements, such as algebra and calculus, prove problematic for students with poor eyesight. A common solution involves pipe cleaners, a cork board and push pins, to recreate graphs, but the method is quite slow. The MED Lab is looking to haptic feedback as a way to help the visually impaired identify lines, graph points and other data that is normally represented visually. For more details about the project check out the video after the break.
Google brings graphing calculator functionality to search, still can't play 'Snake'
Well, Google's gone an done it, turning the Internet into one giant graphing calculator. The software behemoth has brought graphing capabilities to search, letting users input a mathematical function into the engine -- or multiple functions, separated by commas. And, this being Google, users can explore the graphs more closely by zooming in and out and panning across. According to the company, it "covers an extensive range of single variable functions including trigonometric, exponential, logarithmic and their compositions." If you know what all of that means, we're guessing you're pretty psyched about this news.
Daily iPad App: Motion Math HD
Motion Math HD is an iPad-based learning game for elementary children. Developed at the Stanford School of Education, the learning game teaches your child the basics of fractions and the number line. To advance in the game, the child has to place fractions and decimals in their proper position on the number line. Unlike other learning apps which are more like flashcards, Motion Math is an immersive game with a story line and a goal. Unlike traditional games that require the player to collect gold or points to advance, Motion Math makes the player solve math problems. It requires him or her to think and move the iPad to play the game. You play as a fallen star who must return to its place in the sky. The star bounces along a number line and the child tilts the iPad to control the position of the bounce. During the game, fractions appear and the child must bounce the star near the fraction's place on the number line. The 1/2 requires you to bounce in the middle, the 3/4 towards the end, and so on. As you progress, the child has to solve problems like, "Is the fraction greater than or less than 1/2?" In some levels, the star is a pie that's partially filled. The child has to convert the fill to a fraction and bounce it on the number line. The child has to think quickly and move the star even faster which makes the game fun. Children earn points for correct bounces and they level up on a regular baisis. Each new level gets progressively harder and faster which makes the game challenging for both younger and older children. There's also three difficulty levels, so parents can customize the game to meet the learning level of the child. If the child has a hard time solving the problem, there's an arrow to help them pinpoint the bounce and divider lines to improve the accuracy. Motion Math HD is a clever learning game for kids. The game combines learning with action which challenges both your child's brain and their motor skills. It's fun to have to think fast about the fraction and move quickly to place the bounce. The game also has a variety of difficulty levels so you can find the perfect one for your child. This is a much overlooked feature, as it's frustrating to play a game that's too hard or too easy. My only complaint about the game is that it doesn't seem to save your child's progress. When I paused the game and exited, I had to start from the beginning. There's also no support for profiles, so all players share the same data and high scores. The game would be ideal if you could create a new profile for each child to follow his or her progress. Even without progress tracking and profile support, I still highly recommend Motion Math HD to parents of elementary school children. You can give the iPad to your child and not have to worry about them mindlessly tapping on a game. With Motion Math HD, your child is learning while playing. Motion Math HD is available for the iPad and costs US$2.99. There's also an iPhone version that costs $1.99.
MIT-created algorithm predicts likelihood of running red lights, places blame where appropriate
The bad news: Math will always judge you. The good news: It'll still be there to judge everyone else. In a recent article published in the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, MIT's Professor Jonathan How and three colleagues announced they've created an algorithm that can predict whether an oncoming car is about to run a red light one or two seconds before a possible collision. The algorithm can compute the likelihood of a vehicle running a red light based on its rate of deceleration as it is approaching the intersection with a level of precision down to mere milliseconds. The team, which applied the algorithm to more than 15,000 vehicles during the study, used instruments that monitored vehicle speeds and locations as well as when the lights turned red. When the results were tallied, they found that they were able to correctly predict who would run a red light 85 percent of the time. In other news, MIT is working on a much simpler algorithm capable of predicting when your significant other will break up with you, the formula factoring in at least four behavioral elements from the last season of "Jersey Shore."
PBS Kids launches augmented reality game for iOS, says all the cool kids are counting sushi
It's official: Kids today have way cooler toys than you did when you were growing up. PBS Kids has just outed its first augmented reality mobile app for iOS -- a game called Fetch! Lunch Rush that aims to take the sting out of learning to do addition and subtraction in your head. If you're up on PBS' children's programming (and why wouldn't you be?), you'll recognize that pooch Ruff Ruffman as the game show host in the animated show Fetch! Here, he's a legendary movie director trying to make sure there's enough sushi for his movie crew (grown-up problems, right?). That's where the augmented reality comes in: bits of raw fish floating around screen. Though it's worth noting that this isn't augmented reality in the strictest sense of the term, in that you have to print out game cards to use with your iPhone or iPod touch's camera. The free app requires an iPhone or iPod touch (fourth-gen or later) or an iPad / iPad 2 running iOS 4.0. While we can't say we're a bit envious of those six- to eight-year-olds with their very own iPod touches, but then again, will they ever know the sheer joy of hunting in Oregon Trail over and over again? %Gallery-139344%
Daily iPhone App: Wolfram Alpha
Games are popular on the App Store right now (check out the lists of top paid and free aps), but several readers have asked us to extend beyond games with the Daily iPhone App series. So, here you go. Wolfram Alpha for iPhone is a mobile version of the very useful "computational knowledge engine" service. Just like the online version, Wolfram Alpha for iPhone provides answers to your questions about math, almanac-style timetables, or just about anything else you need to know. Answers are provided in the form of text, images, tables, charts, graphs, grids, and so on. The app does require an Internet connection, unfortunately, but it's recently been tuned up and streamlined, so it should be faster than ever. The app has also gotten support of Facebook sharing, so if you find something interesting, you can make sure your friends see it as well. WolframAlpha can be super helpful whenever you're out and about. The universal app is available on the App Store for US$1.99.
GDC Online 2011: KingsIsle's Sara Jensen Schubert talks RPG math
I'm sure many of us have wondered how game developers decide upon item stats, experience amounts, damage per second, and all of the other numbers that we come across in our favorite games. Actually, it might sound more like, "Why the heck is my uber sword of uberness only doing X amount of damage?!" At GDC Online this week, Sara Jensen Schubert gave a rare glimpse into the math behind MMORPGs. She has worked on games like Shadowbane and DC Universe Online and is now a lead designer at KingsIsle Entertainment. Her background and focus is a traditional RPG viewpoint, and she builds from there to go through the process of designing and building stats, character attributes, experience rewards, the leveling curve, and itemization. While her talk is aimed at those in the industry, it offers a unique perspective into what goes into those stats behind our gear and why it takes us so long to level up. Read on for highlights from the presentation.
School district eyes iPads to improve students' math scores
We've heard of secondary schools and universities swapping out books for iPads before, but now thanks to a pilot program in four middle schools in Las Vegas, we're beginning to see just how helpful iPads can be in an educational setting. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1,150 children at the four schools were given iPads preloaded with Fuse Algebra textbooks and software instead of regular math books, pencils, and paper. Now while working on their math assignments, the children can use the iPads to watch tutorials and get instant feedback on an equation they completed. If they got the math problem wrong, they can put on headphones and watch a tutorial on the spot teaching them how to solve it correctly. While official results of the pilot program won't be available for some time, anecdotal evidence on its effectiveness is very good. One student said that she was traditionally a C or D student in math, but since using the iPad in the classroom, her average math scores have increased to Bs or As. The teachers are jut as enthusiastic about using the iPads in the classroom. Principal Robert Mars said, "Any tech we use – a laptop, smart board, iPod Touch, handheld transponder – anything that's tech-related, kids gravitate toward that. Every child is engaged constantly by having them in their hands."
Graphing calculator web browser lets you visit your favorite sine wave fan sites (video)
Graphing calculators: essential tools for math education or low-res Game Boys? The debate rages on. Advocates of non-mathematical applications for the devices have scored a major victory with the introduction of Gossamer, a new web browser for various TI graphing calculators, which lets users visit some very basic versions of webpages, using the CALCnet and globalCALCnet protocols. The 1.0 version can request, display, and scroll pages. Logging in will bring you to a portal with links -- the application's developer has promised to add the ability to directly enter URLs in a future version, however. There's a demo video after the break, though you may want to wait until after math class to check it out.
Google bids pi for Nortel's wireless patent stash, brings comedy to places you never thought possible
Enabling surfers to play Pac-Man instead of actually initiating the search they showed up to complete? Taking a stroll through an episode of Burn Notice? Throwing internet on a magical Indian bus? All relatively normal things from one Google, Inc., but it seems that Larry Page's deadpan demeanor is actually covering up quite the character. During the outfit's recent attempt to outbid the likes of Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, RIM and Sony for a sliver of Nortel's coveted wireless patent portfolio, Reuters is reporting that Google's plays were... less than conventional. Reportedly, the company bid $1,902,160,540 and $2,614,972,128, better known by mathematicians as Brun's constant and Meissel-Mertens constant, respectively. Funnier still, Google decided to offer $3.14159 billion (you know, pi) when the bidding reached $3 billion. One of the unnamed sources summed up the bizarreness quite well: "Google was bidding with numbers that were not even numbers. It became clear that they were bidding with the distance between the earth and the sun. One was the sum of a famous mathematical constant, and then when it got to $3 billion, they bid pi. Either they were supremely confident or they were bored." Or, perhaps they're just supremely awesome?
Scientists develop algorithm to solve Rubik's cubes of any size
A computer solving a Rubik's cube? P'shaw. Doing it in 10.69 seconds? Been there, record set. But to crack one of any size? Color us impressed. Erik Demaine of MIT claims to have done just that -- he and his team developed an algorithm that applies to cubes no matter how ambitious their dimensions. Pretty early on, he realized he needed to take a different angle than he would with a standard 3 x 3 x 3 puzzle, which other scientists have tackled by borrowing computers from Google to consider all 43 quintillion possible moves -- a strategy known simply as "brute force." As you can imagine, that's not exactly a viable solution when you're wrestling with an 11 x 11 x 11 cube. So Demaine and his fellow researchers settled on an approach that's actually a riff on one commonly used by Rubik's enthusiasts, who might attempt to move a square into its desired position while leaving the rest of the cube as unchanged as possible. That's a tedious way to go, of course, so instead the team grouped several cubies that all needed to go in the same direction, a tactic that reduced the number of moves by a factor of log n, with n representing the length of any of the cube's sides. Since moving individual cubies into an ideal spot requires a number of moves equal to n², the final algorithm is n²/log n. If we just lost you non-math majors with that formula, rest assured that the scientists expect folks won't be able to apply it directly, per se, though they do say it could help cube-solvers sharpen their strategy. Other that, all you overachievers out there, you're still on your own with that 20 x 20 x 20.
