Socratic — now with Math!

Since the launch of the Socratic app in the fall, students have asked us millions of questions across every high-school subject. Of these subjects, math is by far the most popular, and for good reason — nearly every student takes math, often for multiple years, and it’s hard!

Today we’re thrilled to release the next major step in making math easy to learn: take a picture of a math equation — typed or handwritten — and we’ll break it down step-by-step, and teach you how each step works, for free.

Check it out:

Starting with Algebra problems, we first show a step-by-step solution to the problem, with each step clearly color-coded and explained.

We then show Explainers, which teach underlying concepts using simple language and visuals, so students can learn to solve similar problems. Finally, we show graphs, videos, and definitions, adding layers of understanding.

Two teams worked closely over 6 months to build this experience. Our pedagogy team looked through countless math questions asked by students and categorized both the steps required to solve them and the underlying concepts. They wrote high quality Explainers to teach these concepts, and tested them with hundreds of high-school students.

Meanwhile, our engineering team taught a computer how to solve algebra equations step-by-step. They incorporated lessons learned by the pedagogy team, so the steps we show are similar to what a great teacher or tutor would show a student.

Our math experience covers high school Algebra today, and we plan to cover Calculus, Trigonometry, and every other major topic in math.

We know this is a big problem that a lot of people in the education community care about, so not only are we giving away steps for free in our app (something most apps charge for), we’re also open-sourcing our core step-by-step solver: mathsteps. You can read about the technical details of how mathsteps works, or jump right into the code.

We’re excited to provide students with an incredible and free math learning experience on iOS. With our ever-growing explainer and math coverage and an Android app in the works, we hope to keep making learning easier and more accessible, the world over.

Get the Socratic app today and try it out.

❤ Ahmed, Shreyans, and the entire Socratic Team.

Special thanks to Evy, Daavid, Genevieve, Tyler, Nico, and all the high-school kids that helped us test the app.