Mathletics can’t afford to make mistakes like this

mathletics-is-broken2Our Senior Primary School Correspondent, Bruce T, recently checked his daughter’s homework and found that Mathletics was marking answers she had right as being incorrect. Now I’m going to guess that Bruce is unusual in that he went through and checked the answers rather than just assuming Mathletics was right – and that raises the question: How many other questions is Mathletics getting wrong?

At one level everyone makes mistakes. I don’t know if the mistake Bruce found came from programming or the content-creator’s maths; given the depth of content on Mathletics it’s almost inevitable that an occasional error will creep in. But it seems to me that Mathletics is like a bank: It works on trust and has to hold itself to an extraordinarily high standard – it simply cannot afford to make anything other than the rarest of mistakes. Matheltics advertising says it is “trusted and used by more than 10,000 schools and 3.5 million students”; that’s an awful lot of people who assume that when Mathletics says a student got an answer wrong they actually did so.

I have long been a big fan of Mathletics, from when users were numbered in thousands instead of millions, and think it’s a genuinely useful online teaching resource. I’ve never noticed an error before; but seeing something like this at very least makes me realise the value of checking what your child or student has done.

3 thoughts on “Mathletics can’t afford to make mistakes like this

  • March 13, 2014 at 9:15 am
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    Hi, it is very common that Mathletics has error and mistakes, either in the “content” of the answer or selection of the answer. We tried to email them but seems like no one at Mathletics bother to response.

    Now we have to sit and work with our kids and make sure they don’t learn the bad answer and bring it to the exam.

    Reply
  • March 8, 2016 at 7:43 pm
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    WE go though a school, they actually should have accredited , if children are using it , I also have questions for them, they should be able to give an explanation as to why questions are wrong …

    Reply
  • March 2, 2017 at 5:05 pm
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    This is not good.It is unaceptable. Millions of Kids are using Mathletics but it is teaching them wrong answers. Mathletics should fix it

    Reply

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