Homework Help: Internet Facts

This post isn’t going to help you with all your homework needs but it makes for a great break and some good reading.  I came across  McKremie the other day while preforming a search about the Internet.  In their blog post you can read 101 facts about the Internet .  It’s also some good World Wide Web knowledge just in case you ever find yourself on Jeopardy.  You might be asked in what year was the World Wide Web created.  (Could happen)
Some of the more interesting facts are:

-The White House launched their first website in October of 1994 under the Clinton Administration.

-The oldest website that is still around is Symbolics.com which went online in March 1985.

-More than one million domain names are registered every month.

-75 percent of the music that is available for download has never been purchased.

-Pictures of naked women make up more than 80% of all the pictures on the Internet.

-If you search on Google for “241543903” you will find random pictures of people with their heads in the freezer.

You can read on and see all the crazy reading for yourself.  Some are hard to believe but I’m sure they did a good job at researching the facts behind all these.  It would also be nice to see how interesting the facts from ten years from now might look.

Free Online Homework Coupon

Pain Free Homework-- Free Coupon to Try Site


Try our new site for free by using mathwarehouse1 as your signup coupon

Math Warehouse's homework forum is switching over to a new and improved system and a new domain-- www.painfreehomework.com. Like  www.mathwarehouse.com/ask, the goal of the new site will be to help students connect with experts for homework help.

There are many changes and lots of improvements on the new site.  The biggest change that you should know about is that you will be asked to purchase answers to your questions. However, as a way to thank you for your membership at mathwarehouse.com  and to encourage you to give our new site at www.painfreehomework.com a try, we are offering a FREE COUPON that will supply you with some virtual money for the new site. 

This coupon will let you continue to get answers to your homework questions for free! (for however long as the $10 coupon lasts!)

There are no  strings attached--no membership fees, no subscription requirements, no commitments at all. You can use this coupon to test drive our new site for free.

You will need to re-register. We didn't think users would want to be automatically re-registered for a new site.

 You must use this coupon when you sign up,  just make sure that you use the following coupon code : mathwarehouse1 .   You must signup by May 1st to be able to use the $10 coupon.

We will be giving away more coupons and freebies in the future so check us out on twitter: http://twitter.com/painfreehw and on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/painfreehomework so you can get some free stuff!

Online Graphing Calculators and Apps

Most U.S. students know about the Texas Instruments Graphing calculators! They are powerful and can do a lot of great stuff including graphing equations, work with matrices ,  perform statistical analysis and much more. Heck they can even work with complex numbers!  and the TI-89 is so powerful that many standardized tests do not allow test takers to use them--the 89 can do a lot of Calculus for you--take derivatives, use the power rule and much more. It's like Wolfram Alpha in a small box !

However, with the rise of the the internet most of these features can now be found online and usually for free! Here' s a list of the best resources that I know

Online Graphing Calculators

• Meta  Calculator - basically  a free virtual Texas instruments calculator 
• Archimy- great 3-d Graphs, even if user interface is a little bit rough around the edges
• Wolfram Alpha - Like a TI-89 on steroids! This baby can do pretty much anything that you might want!
• Google.com - Yes, Google.com can now graph equations! Just type sin(x) in the search bar and you'll see what I mean!

All three of these are very powerful , free. In the end, they can actually do more than your TI calculator at home can probably do!

The New and Improved Site

During the first week of April, our homework question and answer site--currently located at www.mathwarehouse.com/ask, is going to move to a brand new domain  (www.painfreehomework.com  )with a much better system for asking and answering questions. You can see a screen shot of the new home page below: 

What is the same:

• Anyone can ask math questions
• Anyone can answer homework questions
• There will still be a set of expert math teachers, tutors who answer questions 

What is different

• Answers are no longer free. You can buy the answers to your questions (for reasons explained here) .  
• If someone answers a question for you, then you can both rate their response and also leave a comment on their profile (this will help other users know how 'good' a tutor is)
• Before you buy a homework answer, you can first look at the ratings and comments left for the tutor

To re-iterate something that I wrote before, it 's just not possible to ensure that all (or almost  all) users' questions are answered and to do that for free .

Why You Should Try the New Site

Users of mathwarehouse.com/ask will need to create a new account...but you will also get a free coupon that gives you some 'virtual' money to spend on buying some homework help --our way of saying thanks for supporting the site and for trying the new one out!

Students Beware- Should you really take that AP Class?

Taking Advanced Placement classes has become more and more commonplace.  When I was in high school, taking an AP course was a rarity. Nowadays, it is much more common for students to take 3 or even 4 AP courses--and I am not talking about the valedictorian, but rather your 'Joe/Jill high school' type.


This has happened for a few reasons. First, students want to pad their own resumes, but, more disconcerting than that, this increase in AP enrollment is also, often, pushed upon students by schools--schools who are looking out for their own interests--sometimes at the expense of the actual student taking the exam!

Why the Increase Has Happened

This nationwide increase in AP course enrollment occurs for a few reasons. Students  are trying to differentiate themselves  in a competitive college admissions process--something that isn't bad. But, there is another reason that is less innocuous. Many high schools push or 'encourage' students to take all of the AP courses for reasons that, in the end, benefit the school : to increase their own district's rankings when, at the end of the year, Newsweek ranks all of the High School's in the US. You see, the greater percentage of students taking AP courses, the better a  school ranks.

Why Schools Do It

I would like to focus on the second reason--when schools pressure/push kids into AP courses. The way that some magazines like Newsweek  rank high schools is pretty complex and varies from year to year, but some of these rankings take into account the percentage of students enrolled in AP courses. This means that high schools can rank better simply by having more kids in "AP classes." "Enrolled" does not mean that students have to do well on the exams ...they just have to show up for the class. Now, some magazines do take the student AP performance into account, but Newsweek  has only cared about how many students are sitting in AP classes. From a school's perspective, this ranking factor is easy and cheap to manipulate. Administrators have a clear motive for increasing AP class enrollment-- improve their high schools' rankings  ....then they can brag to the community and the school board about how well their school is ranking! Think about it from the administrator's perspective--they can improve their rankings by 1) increasing student performance on state test and SAT exams 2) 'encouraging' kids to take AP courses 3) hiring more teachers and lowering the teacher/student ratio.  The easiest and most 'cost effective' solution is to just shift kids from regular classes to AP classes--after all you don't have to hire new teachers, spend more money...all you have to do is get kids to take different classes and...like magic you'll do better in the Newsweek rankings.

Pushing lots of kids into AP classes has lead, in some cases, to courses that are "AP in name only"(read here for more) or , if the school's AP teachers don't dilute the difficulty level of the classes, this trend has lead to many overwhelmed students whose high school transcripts have actually suffered!

Whatever happened to the Student's best Interest?

Unfortunately, no one is looking for the actual student in this case. So you can end up with an average student taking 2,3 or 4 AP classes, having a low GPA and not doing well on any of the AP exams.  In this case, an average student who could had some kind of B+ average now has, maybe, a C average and didn't do well on the AP exams--the kids just got in over their head. A friend of mine, who works in College Admissions, has said over and over again to me that colleges don't want to see a transcript of a student who took 4 AP classes with low grades and all 1's and 2's on the AP exams. Instead, they'd  rather see a student who got B's in non-AP classes and maybe took 1 or 2 AP exams total. Colleges, he said, often have GPA cut-off's  so if you're below a certain cumulative GPA, they probably won't even glance at your application--even if it's full of A

Since schools, ideally, should be looking out for their own students best interests, this one is really irksome.

So what is a student to do?

You need to look out for yourself, since your guidance counselor might not be.T his means, use your common sense. How many AP courses can you really handle? By "handle" I mean, how many AP courses can you take and still maintain a respectable GPA. The answer to that question should guide your decision making. 

What if you are already stuck in too many tough AP classes?

First off, if you find yourself overwhelmed, meet your guidance counselor and try to change your schedule. If it's too late and you are stuck with your schedule,  try find a good tutor  at school or  get help online --at homework help site or at other good educational sites. Lastly, you can always try to make study groups with your peers.

Related Links
How Newsweek Ranks High Schools
NY Times article on "AP Courses in Name Only"

How Questions are Asked and Answered on the New Site

The new site is in the final testing stages and we are going to launch the site within the next 2 weeks! Check out the screen shot at the top.

I wanted to write a post about the way an 'expert' can be paid. I am quoting expert because anyone can try to be an expert--ie anyone can try to answer a math question . However, we are using an algorithm that will pretty quickly identify which users provide the best answers to your questions . This happens in a few ways. First off, we are going to get a little help from students.

Here's how it will work.

1) Suppose you have the following question : What is a derivative? . After all, who hasn't had this question at some point in their life;)

2) You post the question on our site, along with how money you would be willing to pay for the answer to your question (all of the current site users at www.mathwarehouse.com are going to get a coupon so you'll be able to ask a question or two for free!) .

It is completely free to ask any question.

3) Other users including some math experts that we have hired. ( I will write a post about who the experts are and how we identify certain, regular site users as 'experts' in certain areas) will answer your question and will send you previews of their answers. If you think that a preview looks good, then you can purchase the full response. Before purchasing answer, you can look at the tutor's profile and see how he/she has been rated.

4) After buying the answer to your question, read over the answer and ask the tutor any clarifying questions (Hopefully, you do not want to have someone simply do your math homework but rather actually want to understand the answer to your question.)

5) Rate the tutor's answer and ...the process continues!

Top 10 Homeschooling Websites and Apps

Below is a list of 10 outstanding websites for homeschoolers. We've been using these resources for years and wanted to share them with you.



1. Khan Academy - Sal Khan has taken a new groundbreaking approach to education. He began by tutoring his niece via YouTube videos and has since revolutionized education. His site has grown tremendously and now includes thousands of educational videos. Khan Academy includes a map of knowledge and was recently featured on 60 Minutes.

2. Homeschool Math - This educational site is a wonderful resource for math games, puzzles and worksheets for kids of all ages.

3. Let's Homeschool - Kindergarten through 12th grade homeschooling resources including curriculum, standards, organization and a wide variety of subjects.

4. Math Game Time - Educational website featuring free math games, worksheets, homework help and videos from Pre-K through 7th grade.

5. Internet 4 Classrooms - Susan has created a comprehensive educational website with a myriad of resources for Pre-K through

12th grade students. This site offers a plethora of links, tutorials and grade level help.

6. Homeschool Helper Online - Dedicated to homeschoolers who want to help each other. Includes unit studies, worksheets, phonics, computer lessors and record keeping.

7. Word Game Time - Free word games for teachers, parents and students. Features free games, word worksheets,

videos and homework help covering subjects like Language Arts, Geography, Vocabulary and Spelling.











8. Mr Nussbaum - Greg Nussbaum has taken his teachings and created a wide variety of educational games. His games are creative, fun and cover a variety of topics.

9. BrainPop - Covers Health, Science, Technology, Math, Social Studies, Arts & Music and English movies, quizzes, activity pages and school homework help for K-12 students.

10. The Homeschool Mom - Serving homeschool moms for over a decade. Helpful info on curriculum, high school, college and teacher resources.

In addition, here are 5 great homeschool iPhone and iPad apps worth downloading:

1. Fraction Monkey
2. Math Evolve
3. Pinterest
4. Math Monkey
5. Stack the States



We hope you enjoy these primarily free homeschooling sites and apps. For more homeschooling resources, check out this list of 5 tips for Homeschoolers.

What will the new site cost?

A good question that we thought long and hard about. Although I would love to help provide people with free homework help from quality tutors and experts...it turns out you can't really do that for free . Currently, our homework answer service is actually located at www.mathwarehouse.com/ask where a few teachers and experts have been giving their time to answer questions.

However, it soon became clear that there were not enough experts/teachers who were willing to give substantial amounts of their time to answer all the homework questions(There are almost 2,000 questions right now. It's not a small job)..so I found some very smart people to help out with the questions, and the website has been funding their work for a few months.

This lead to my thinking about the best way to connect experts who can answer math questions with students who are willing to pay for help with their homework. We came up with the following system:

-Anyone can ask any question for free!

-However, when you ask a question, you state how much you would be willing to pay to buy the help that you need.

-Any expert can answer the question. If you want to answer a question, you write a preview of your answer (and the full answer), only the preview will be sent to the question asker.

After you get your answer, you can give the tutor a rating and write a comment-this will help the future students who might want to work with that tutor.

New Site is Coming Along

I am really excited about the progress we are making with the new site. Right now, our homework question and answer service uses http://www.question2answer.org/ software--an open source easy to install application. It's a great product for what it does --which is provide a stackexchange like question and answer board.

However, after using question2answer for some time, there were too many ways in which it did not meet our needs including: 1) not providing any kind of compensation for the experts who tend to answer all of the questions 2) offering a rather inflexible user profile accounts that lacked features we wanted like user ratings, comments 3) not providing the sort of hierarchical organization that subjects tend to have (ie calculus is a subcategory of Math while Java is a subcategory of Programming). To be completely clear, I think that question2answer is great, but it is just not a marketplace.

But if we are going to create a marketplace for math homework help, it became clear that a different platform was needed, and we are getting there. The new site looks awesome (see the screenshots at the bottom). It is a veritable homework marketplace where you can post math homework questions, state how much money you would pay to get help. After that tutors/experts can reply by sending you a preview of their answer. If you like their preview, you can buy the answer to your question. Here are some screenshots:

What is Calculus?

A few days ago, I honestly could not tell you the answer to the question "What is Calculus?"

Yes, I did take calculus (even did well on the AP exam) but it's been a long time (we're talking decades not years here) since I did anything involving calculus. Yes, I could take a simple derivative but, frankly, I just didn't remember much more than that.

However, a friend of mine (who spent several years as an electrical engineer before becoming an AP calculus teacher) and I started a new site dedicated to Calculus and higher math. To clarify our roles, he brings the calculus to the table and I bring the 'make it a web page.' I hope that this site will become a useful resource for any calculus student and teacher!

Anyway, I will not paraphrase the whole page, but if you want to know "What Calculus is", then simply visit this page. Trust me, if I got it, so will you.

Math Resources: Slope of a Line

Since this is a blog about Pain Free Homework site (www.painfreehomwork.com) I thought it'd be fitting to talk about a topic that causes many student's pain: Math. Hopefully, this will help alleviate your math homework pain!

I wanted to dedicate a post to a topic in math that just doesn't go away: The Slope of A line. It comes up in calculus, algebra and even, often, in geometry! At the bottom of the post, is a picture of the general formula from slope , and I wanted to list out the best resources (to my knowledge) for understanding slope of a line:

• Interactive Slope Applet -Great applet lets you drag 2 points around to explore how the slope formula works
• Slope of A line Tutorial - A great one stop place for understanding how slope works, includes power point style walk through, many examples, pictures
• Slope from Graph -
• Slope Formula Calculator -Type in two points and this baby'll do the rest!
• Slope Worksheet - free pdf with answer key on slope

If you know of other good resources on slope, let me know in the comments!

Mortgage Calculator-Fee Cool New Tool

I wanted to write a quick post about great new free online calculator/tool for anyone who wants to see how mortgage payments and amortizations work.

Meta-Calculator.com's free online mortgage calculator provides much more than just a simple loan amortization table. It also shows you, graphically, how much of your money goes to towards the principal and how much goes to the interest. You can see this as both a bar graph and a pie chart.

It's definitely a handy fee online tool for anyone who is either thinking of getting a mortgage or simply wants to understand how the payments look over time.

Changes are Coming

Math Warehouse.com 's question and answer service has some major changes coming...more details to follow over the next week or two.

Meta-Calculator-Awesome free calculator

If you are looking for an awesome free online graphing calculator, check out Meta Calculator .

It's list of features are really comprehensive and have already been listed at length in other blogs including Tutor Vista's blog post about the calculator , this blog post of the calculator or this one!

For those of you who want a very quick overview of the calculator's features,t hey include

• Graph up to 7 equations


• Output a table of values for each equation


• Trace points of each equation


• Solve Systems of Equations


• Calculate Regressions


• Perform other advanced statistical analysis like T-Test, standard deviation

Try the calculator out and, if you like it, you can buy the app version for your iphone/ipad. Either way, enjoy the free online version!

Hello World

More Coming soon...