Exercise the Basic Mathematical Operations

Learning and rehearsing elementary algebra is never a tedious task if you have a friend to help you out. With Math Practice you can put to the test the skills of kids studying addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

Quite often children need assistance when taking their first steps in learning new things and this is true especially for the scientific discipline called mathematics. Some will love it, some will hate it, but all will need it and this is why it is very important to have pupils understand their math lessons right from the earliest stages of education.

Basic algebra operations stay with us throughout our entire lives because we need to do simple calculations on a daily basis. The more you practice as a schoolchild the easier these problem solving moments will become. Enlisting the help of the specialist is, as always, advisable, so it's time for Math Practice to come into play.

This application is very lightweight, at almost 13 KB in ZIP format, and so easy to use that it can almost be operated by toddlers. There is another priceless advantage of this tiny tool that has to be mentioned right from the start, namely the fact that it comes completely free of cost.

The software is ready to run right out of the box, no additional files needed, just the executable that starts the app. On the downside, as you will notice as soon as you open it, this utility doesn't have what one may call a good looking interface. The GUI is dull and seems to originate from an early era of computer programming, nonetheless you will be able to effortlessly read the numbers and access the functions that are all available from the same main window.

There is no learning curve when it comes to using the application because anyone can understand how it works in a minute. The first thing you must do in order to get started is choose the desired problem type. Math Practice can generate exercises for all the basic operations: addition, subtraction, division and multiplication.

As soon as you decide what kind of questions you want the kid to solve, the next step is deciding the amount of time that will be allocated for figuring out the answers. There are several available intervals that rage between two and eight minutes, but, unfortunately, that's pretty much it in this respect because there is no option to manually configure the time frame.

With these two selections made, all that's left for you to do is press the 'Start' button and let the youngster sort out the calculations. The exercises are randomly selected and once turned on there's only one way to go: forward. The application has no 'Pause' function, you can stop the countdown, but that will also spell the end of that session.

This utility keeps tally of all answers and categorizes them in 'Correct' and 'Wrong' so the person supervising the activity can evaluate more easily the pupil. There is another feature that is designed to make things even more clear in terms of accuracy and it deals with the percentage of exact solutions provided during the test.

Regardless of the time interval you opt for, the entire number of problems that the kid will face is constant: one hundred. It seems quite a lot is you take into consideration that this software is meant to serve as a practicing tool for 3rd graders at the most. It would have been better to have an option for customizing the total quantity of questions to balance matters for when short periods of time are designated.

Because Math Practice only uses single and double digit numbers, many inquiries will come up more than once, even several times in a row thanks to the randomization algorithm. This is not necessarily a bad thing, especially when the figures are in reversed order. For instance, you can have something like 7 +4 = ? followed by 4+7=? and this will test the child's capacity to quickly adapt and realize the answer is identical in both cases.

When the time is up, a little box will pop up and announce it so that the supervisor can take a look at the results. At this stage, if you want to begin a new exercise targeting different problems, you can't. To go round this issue you have to either restart the application or click 'Start' and then 'Stop' to activate the drop down lists.

If you expect such a small and uncomplicated utility to have a marginal impact on system resources you're absolutely right. In fact, this is the least problematic area of this software, as it barely touches the physical memory with just over 1 MB of RAM required to properly function. Needless to mention, the processor doesn't even twitch while this program is operating.


The Good

Math Practice scores the most points because it is simply a breeze to operate; it comes in a very lightweight package and doesn't require installation. The great ease of use is accompanied by a decent feature pack and another strength that is worth remarking here is the almost complete lack of load on the system.

The Bad

The first thing that can be noted on the downside is the antique interface that is anything but appealing. Some features like customizable time intervals and number of questions could be added to increase the degree of control over the application. Also, for monitoring the pupil's progress over time it would certainly help if the results of each test could be saved for later revision and comparison.

The Truth

Thanks to its small size and simple functioning, Math Practice does provide good performance and fulfills its main purpose. With the assistance from this little tool your kids can realistically test and improve their knowledge, so even though it's a bit rough on the edges, this utility deserves at least a try.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action:

 

This article is also available in Spanish: Ejerce las operaciones matemáticas básicas