Mathway
Description
The first time I downloaded Mathway was in a vicious calculus semester when I was staring at problem sets at 2 AM and had no one to ask to help me. The app did as it claimed to do, I entered the problem, pressed solve, and received an answer nearly immediately. Whether that actually assisted me in learning anything is a different discussion altogether.
Mathway is a math solving application created by Chegg, the same company that created those textbook rental and homework help services that every college student has already heard about by now. You type in a mathematical problem – or use your phone camera to scan it – and the app gives you the answer. It includes not only simple arithmetic and pre-algebra, but all the way up to calculus, linear algebra, statistics, and even some calculations bordering physics. The variety is truly impressive of a single app.
One of those little things that counts is the built-in math keyboard. Attempting to enter fractions, square roots, or integrals on an ordinary phone keyboard is a nightmare, and Mathway does that in a good way. You select your topic area first, such as calculus, and the keyboard changes to display appropriate symbols. It is a small thing, but it saves a lot of fussing about.
In my experience, the camera scan feature is where it is a bit hit or miss. When it succeeds, it is magic. You take a picture of a textbook problem with your phone, and the app reads it right. But when it works is carrying a heavy load in that sentence. Handwritten problems? Maybe fifty-fifty. Problems printed in strange fonts or narrow spacing? It occasionally picks up the wrong symbols. I have on more than one occasion misread a minus sign as an equal sign, which is clearly disastrous to the whole solution. You soon get to know that you have to check what the scanner actually scanned before you can trust the result.
This is where most people, including me, are frustrated. The free version provides you with the final answer and nothing more. No action, no description, no here is how we got there. Just the number. In case you already know the technique and only need to check your work, it is okay. However, when you are at a crossroad and attempting to determine where your line of thought failed, a bare answer is practically useless. The premium subscription is required to access step-by-step solutions, which costs about 10 dollars a month or about 80 dollars a year depending on the plan.
I spent one month on finals and it was well worth it at that particular crunch time. The step breakdowns are well defined and have a logical flow that largely resembles the way a textbook would present things. However, I found the annual subscription to be too much, and I terminated it at the end of the semester. In case you are a person who has a problem with math every year, the annual plan could be more economically reasonable. To the rest of us, it is like renting an app that you use twice a week.
The other thing that is worth mentioning is that Mathway is not a tutor and it does not claim to be a tutor. No lessons, no practice problems, no progress tracking. You will not open this app and emerge on the other side knowing more about derivatives than you did previously. It takes the problem you present it with and passes. Others use it as a crutch and come out worse since they never actually work on the material – I have witnessed that to be the case with classmates who over relied on it. The app is a checking tool rather than a substitute to actually sitting down and working through the concepts.
Mathway works well on most days performance-wise. Sometimes it strangely takes a long time to work out something that ought to be simple, and I have seen it hang once or twice on longer phrases. Nothing disastrous, but significant enough to be irritating when you are attempting to work through a problem set. Some of my study group also had issues with subscription glitches, where they paid but the step-by-step feature was not unlocked immediately, and they had to contact the support.
Summary — download Mathway when you need to check answers quickly or when you are stuck and it is midnight and you have no tutor. Do not delude yourself that it is taking the place of the actual learning part. The application is a calculator that has an additional reach, not a teacher.
