This is a genuine ask for feedback and your guys honest initial thoughts on this.

The idea: episodic, narrative-driven games where you play as a historical mathematician (Euler, Ramanujan & Hardy, Emmy Noether, Al-Khwarizmi) and work through the actual problem they were trying to solve, in the historical context they were in. This would NOT be a quiz. Not "here's the theorem, now answer questions about it." More like: here's the problem as they faced it, with the same partial information, the same wrong turns, and the same dead ends. You follow the reasoning as it actually unfolded, focusing on Interactive discovery.

FAIR WARNING: A question that I think we often get is “how will this teach mathematics?” and the answer is: it won’t. This would NOT be an education game that teaches you maths, or even the entirety of maths history. It humanises mathematics, and tells the story of certain figures within maths history, hopefully showing that mathematics is a very important part of our history not just for the field itself, but for us as humans. Eventually, we’d want this to reach people who may not be entirely interested in maths, but still interested in the history and the narrative, and show that maths is not just about adding numbers together.

The audience we're imagining is basically: people who watch 3Blue1Brown, Veritasium and other science / mathematics content, who come away wanting more depth, more context, more of a sense of what it actually felt like to be inside these ideas.

But here's what we genuinely don't know:

- Is a game even the right format for this? Or does the interactivity get in the way of what makes these stories compelling?
- Would you actually want to do the maths, or do you prefer being shown it?
- Does putting you in the role of the mathematician sound exciting, or does it sound exhausting/boring?
- Is this something people want alongside videos like 3B1B (a different kind of experience) or does it feel like it's trying to unnecessarily replace something?
- What would make you instantly close it and never look back?
- Who would you want to know the story of? (we wanted to start with mathematicians, but eventually branch out into scientists, or whoever else might be interesting to the players)

Some more important points: this would be team-built and funded, so not a scratch game, and part of this team would be experienced mathematicians and maths historians so we’re not just reading the Wikipedia page to write the story. We also want this to be as authentic as possible. We think history is fascinating and dramatic organically, so there is no need to add lies and warp events just to make them more “entertaining” (although, as with a lot of history — especially the ancient kind — there will be moments where different sources say different things and human bias makes things complicated, so our goal is for this project to be heavily community based, with many decisions falling onto you). Okay, that is all.

We're pre-build so we don’t have a demo or anything, we’re just trying to figure out if we're solving a real problem or inventing one.

I’ve noticed that some students can solve calculations quite comfortably during practice, but the moment the same concept appears inside a paragraph or “real-life situation,” they become unsure very quickly.

For example, a student may solve fraction operations correctly on their own, but struggle to identify what the question is actually asking in a word problem.

It makes me wonder whether the difficulty is more about mathematical reasoning, reading comprehension, or simply anxiety caused by longer questions.

Has anyone else experienced this while learning or teaching Maths?

do students suddenly struggle when numbers are inside word problems?

Not sure this is the right place. But been rediscovering some prime proofs by accident. And it got me thinking about multiplication tabkes and complimentary tables are the "easy ones" I left school when they were phasing out the importance of 11 and 12 tables. Just needed to go to 10.

Maybe other peoples brains work differently but why don't we just focus on the prime tables. Here is a table I whipped up

As a new grandmother who studied math in college I am appalled at this attempt to weaken a young mind in solving any mathematical equation. Created by the masterful Greeks it is horrific to see this attempt to change the theoretical process of pure math. Now I have to teach my grandson how to turn in new math homework to be graded but I vow to show him the pure math solution. Our Prussian based education system is completely damaged. Breaking apart numbers so it’s easier to understand is such a disgrace. How can any educational institution allow teaching such a deviant path away from the pure math created by the Ancient Greeks?

This is not counting brief little mistakes, this is more of what's the easiest thing they got wrong but had declared that it was right, or were confident it was their answer (or option 3 admitted that they couldn't get an answer).

I have had one colleague get Pythagoras wrong when solving for a hypotenuse (he had been teaching for 40 years), and I had another coworker not know how to get find the height of an isosceles triangle if you only have the base and the length of the diagonals (she has been teaching maths for 12 years).

I’m a high school math teacher finishing off my geometry class (9th and 10th graders) with a unit on probability. I’m requiring students to use fractions in their calculations, and that is of course a struggle for many students.

My question is whether you think that most of these students never understood basic fraction arithmetic (+, -, x, /, lowest terms) or they understood at one point, but have totally forgotten?

I am painfully aware of how difficult it is for many of my students to remember much of anything. But it’s hard to tackle math if little to nothing ever goes into your long-term memory. Thoughts?

I've recently been made aware of the Art of Problem Solving curriculum. I did a deep dive on it because I have some friends who are locally enrolling their kids and I recall wondering about math competitions in high school but I didn't pursue it.

I had a totally conventional U.S. math education, having done AP Calculus senior year in high school. I remember it being pretty challenging.

Dipping into this olympiad/competition stuff is really melting my brain - not just because the problems are absurd but because this supposedly parallel curriculum, that's supposed to be an enhanced superset of the regular curriculum, is actually completely and totally different.

What I don't understand is how this asymmetry can really exist. The 18 year old who just finished AoPS Precalculus and the 18 year old who just scored a 3 on AP Precalculus are different species. Is this what olympiad kids are? The level of difficulty, the integration of esoteric theory and advanced proof techniques in the AoPS curriculum seems to create a totally unrecoverable gap. I just had no idea how massive the difference was. It seems impossible that a university math department could cater to both individuals without wholly separating them. If they both pursued a math degree don't understand how they could ever converge on the same curriculum.

Canvas had this cool feature called "formula quizzes" where I could create 100 versions of a question like [x] + [y] = what number and then specify that x was integer/decimal whatever. I could use unlimited variables and it was awesome. Now, our district can't afford Canvas so I"m looking for alternatives. There's something Llama or Guru or something, but it only allows two variables.

I've heard so many people say that it's hard to come across a good math teacher. I've been studying math for quite some time and I don't think I've had a teacher I really admired. No one who truly builds intuition or makes the subject feel less daunting.
I want to know why math is so hard to teach. Is it the subject itself, or do mathematicians just not have a knack for verbalizing their thoughts?

Hi everyone! 👋

I’m currently taking my Master’s degree and starting my thesis writing. I teach high school Mathematics, and I’m looking for a research topic that is practical, manageable within a few months, and can be implemented in my own classes.

My area of interest is mainly:
Mathematics teaching and learning
Development of mathematical problem-solving skills
Teaching practices/strategies that improve student learning outcomes
Classroom-based interventions or action research

I’m hoping for topics that are:
✔ feasible for a classroom teacher
✔ not too expensive or complicated
✔ possible to finish within one school year or less
✔ ideally quantitative, mixed methods, or quasi-experimental

Do you have any suggested research topics, variables, or current trends worth exploring in Math education?
Would really appreciate your ideas and experiences. Thank you! 🙏