I-Corps: Mathemagician - a scalable digital math tutoring service.

University Of Southern California, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

This project involves the exploration of the commercialization potential of Mathemagician, a scalable digital math tutor that provides grade 4-12 students the one-on-one interaction similar to human tutors but without the cost. Mathemagician is motivated by the premise that teaching step-by-step mathematical reasoning processes is far more important than simply emphasizing the final result when developing a student's mathematical deduction skills. Mathemagician is an automated suite that analyzes every step of the user's math solution, without slowing down the users. Mathemagician may actually speed them up. By analyzing the individual step-by-step successes and failures, Mathemagician seamlessly assesses the student's strengths and weaknesses. Mathemagician is a personal tutor that makes math engaging and affordable. Mathemagician applies automated deduction ,combined with a parallel computing philosophy (also known as man-computer symbiosis), to configure symbolic computing to suit human math-behavior. It uses a spatial user interface to boost the communication rate between human and computer, enabling parallel computing between the two. Mathemagician incorporates real-life math application examples, which motivates students to learn math by seeing its true context. This approach to personalized education ensures the lessons and practices a student receives are at a level befitting the student's current capability, without aggressive testing which may interfere with the student's interest. Mathemagician supports all math topics that have a group theory or linear algebra structure; including all K-12 math topics, calculus, and beyond. During the I-Corps program, the team will focus on exploring user communities as well as collecting student performance data to support their educational credibility. In addition, the team will actively approach local schools to closely collaborate with innovative teachers.