Top 10 math help sites
By Murray Bourne, 27 Apr 2011
Here are some of the best places to ask your math questions, each at zero cost. Do you have a favorite that I've missed?
Answered by experts
1. Ask Dr. Math has been going since 1994 and has a wealth of answers to a broad range of readers' questions. It's searchable, as are all the recommendations below.
UPDATE (Jan 2018): Dr Math is now called "The Math Doctors" and has moved to a new site. New questions may be submitted at TheMathDoctors.org/ask/
Community driven
The answers in each of the following forums are provided by members of the forum. The quality of the answers varies - caveat emptor!
The list below is roughly in order of answer quality, but if course, it depends on each particular question.
2. Physics forums - math category around 30,000 questions. There's also a section specifically for homework questions. You need to show your own work before anyone will answer you - and rightly so. The rules for Physics Forums (including a list of banned topics) has helped to maintain its quality.
3. My Math Forum - around 15,000 questions with answers so far.
4. AskMe Help Desk (math category) This one allows for math notation in questions and answers.
5. Askville (math category) (by Amazon - has disappeared).
6. Yahoo answers (Click on "Science & Mathematics", then "Mathematics").
7. Answerbag (math category). Around 5000 questions in clearly defined sub-categories (no longer exists)
8. AOL Answers (math category)
9. OpenStudy (math category) This one is quite new. Their slogan is "Make the World Your Study Group". The interface is very chat-like and you can see answers appearing to questions in real time. This one is free to look at, but there is a membership fee for asking questions.
10. Wolfram|Alpha. This is not a forum - it's a "computational knowledge engine". Many forum questions I saw can easily be solved using Wolfram|Alpha, for example "Convert 6 inches to cm." or "Factor r^6 - 3r^4 +3r^2 -1". And the answer will be correct!
Disclaimer and suggestion
With most of these sites, you can ask your homework question and if you are lucky, someone will answer it for you. (Some sites will only answer you if you show some working first, to indicate you are not being lazy, you are a genuine student, and you are actually stuck in the middle of the question.)
If you are even luckier, the answer provided will be correct and will have some good explanation to go with it.
Now, you can just copy the answer given into your homework assignment and get marks for it - but what have you learned?
Some of the answers I've seen on these sites are plain incorrect (some people want to be sociable, rather than right) and the risk is, you would copy the answer and get it wrong.
My suggestion then, is to do several other similar questions from your text book to make sure you really know how to do it after getting help from a forum. In this way, you'll actually be able to do that kind of question when it comes out in a test, and more importantly, you will be building your knowledge and skills for future learning.
Any more?
Do you have a recommendation for a good forum beyond the ones I've listed?
See the 30 Comments below.
6 May 2011 at 12:58 am [Comment permalink]
Thank you for aggregating!
Art of Problem Solving ~90k - if you have a question that's actually interesting
https://artofproblemsolving.com/community
Mathoverflow - if you have a research-level question (strictly enforced)
http://mathoverflow.net/
StackOverflow Math Exchange - also grown-up level, but more general ("for professionals studying and using math at any level")
http://math.stackexchange.com/
10 May 2011 at 4:21 pm [Comment permalink]
Thanks, Raj. My list includes specifically forums where users can ask questions, but Eduarrow appears to be tutorials only.
4 Jun 2011 at 2:53 am [Comment permalink]
Hello, Mr. Bourne.
Informative post! Including the comments, I learned about several forums I hadn’t known about previously.
Here are a couple more I visit:
S.O.S. Mathematics
http://www.sosmath.com/
In addition to the forums, the site contains many useful math references.
Math is Fun Forums
http://www.mathisfunforum.com/index.php
Math Help Forum
http://mathhelpforum.com/
4 Jun 2011 at 8:58 am [Comment permalink]
Hi David and thanks for the extra forum information.
Through your blog I found your math javascript library. Impressive stuff!
6 Jun 2011 at 11:27 pm [Comment permalink]
Here's one more:
Free Math Help
http://freemathhelp.com/forum/
31 Jan 2012 at 1:52 pm [Comment permalink]
How about The Student Room?
You mentioned WolframAlpha - something I show all my students. I have a series of slideshows on WolframAlpha to help students learn the syntax
31 Jan 2012 at 2:54 pm [Comment permalink]
@Colleen: Thanks for the extra resources. I like The Student Room where they ban people from giving full answers (while letting the person who asked the question figure it out for themselves). Exactly how it should be done!
Your Wolfram|Alpha slides are valuable, too. All the best.
28 Jan 2013 at 4:21 pm [Comment permalink]
Dear Mr. Bourne,
I was reading your post and thought you might have missed out on a very important math help site which is relatively new but has a lot to offer.
The name of the site is "Math Help Boards" and the following is the url of its homepage:
http://mathhelpboards.com/
Our site gives free math help without any paid subscriptions and there are many knowledgeable members from undergraduate students to professors.
I invite you to have a look at this site and consider the possibility of adding it to your math help sites list.
Please don't hesitate to reply to my email address if you have any queries.
Thank you for your time,
Kind Regards,
Sudharaka.
28 Jan 2013 at 4:23 pm [Comment permalink]
@Sudharaka: Thanks for the resource. All the best with it!
19 Feb 2014 at 10:37 pm [Comment permalink]
Another free resource related to math is Algebra-Calculus site.
20 Feb 2014 at 10:27 am [Comment permalink]
@Paul: You have an error in the question in Example 2 on this page.
4 Mar 2014 at 8:57 pm [Comment permalink]
@Murray:Hello.
Thanks for finding typo.
Fixed.
10 Jul 2014 at 11:39 pm [Comment permalink]
Good job done, I really found helpful this list.
11 Nov 2014 at 1:17 am [Comment permalink]
One more such useful mathematics site(ebooks):
http://freecomputerbooks.pickatutorial.com/category/mathematics.htm
20 Nov 2014 at 8:50 am [Comment permalink]
@King: Why are you saying to ignore it, and then say it is useful??
I had a look at some of the forum discussions. This is a site that helps students get better grades (by just copying and pasting the answers given), but does little to ensure students are actually learning anything.
Generally not impressed.
5 Aug 2015 at 1:31 pm [Comment permalink]
Nice Work Dr. Math for provide the best classes class for our children . Thanks for share it.
7 Mar 2016 at 1:06 pm [Comment permalink]
Nice post. Your post contains an awesome resource for math sites. These sites help students to resolve their maths issues instantly.
23 Jun 2016 at 11:19 am [Comment permalink]
Thanks for the effort. Despite the name, Physicsforum is a goldmine of information even in technical mathematics. Nowadays with the startup boom, there's a few math communities that has a social learning component to it. Brilliant.org and Quora for example comes to mind.
19 Aug 2016 at 7:22 pm [Comment permalink]
Truth be told I have always thought it best to let my kids do their own homework, mistakes and all.
29 Aug 2017 at 9:36 pm [Comment permalink]
Photomath is mobile app that allows math problem solving
15 Nov 2017 at 8:38 am [Comment permalink]
[…] Yahoo answers, Answerbag (math category), AOL Answers (math category), and Open Study. References https://www.intmath.com/blog/learn-math/top-10-math-help-sites-5966 […]
9 Jan 2018 at 12:30 am [Comment permalink]
Thanks for your recommendation of Ask Dr. Math (mathforum.org/dr.math). It is important to us that, as you mentioned, we do not just give answers, but rather help students find their own.
I want to let you know that, although that site is still accessible for viewing its archive of past answers, questions can no longer be submitted there. The Math Doctors have started a new and improved site at TheMathDoctors.org, where we now take questions as before, and also have a new blog discussing past answers.
The following wording would now be appropriate for that entry:
"Ask Dr. Math has been going since 1994 and has a wealth of answers to a broad range of readers' questions. It's searchable, as are all the recommendations below. New questions may be submitted at TheMathDoctors.org
9 Jan 2018 at 8:00 am [Comment permalink]
Thanks for reaching out, Dave. I've amended my post.
Good luck with your new venture!
31 Aug 2018 at 11:46 pm [Comment permalink]
Three friends P,Q and R share an apartment and share the rent equall The monthly income of R is 25 % less than that of Q and Rs.8000 less than that of P. Monthly expenditure of Q on food is Rs.1000 more than that of P and is Rs.1000 less than that of R. Afte meeting the expenses on rent and food, they save amounts in the ratio 6:7:4. 101.ifQ saves 62 1/29% of his total monthly income, then how much percent does R save out of his month income? A.47 13 / 21 % C. 45 5/21. B , 48 12 / 21 % D. 491121 % E , Cantbe determiner . 102. If the total amount spent by all the three on food is Rs.27000 and the monthly income of Qis Rs.,6000 more than that of P, then what is the monthly rent of the apartment? A.48000. B.30000. D. Rs.36000. E. Cannot be determined.
1 Sep 2018 at 2:49 pm [Comment permalink]
@Venky: IF you need homework help, feel free to post your question on the IntMath Forum.
5 Dec 2019 at 4:52 am [Comment permalink]
Please write equation of parabolla with vertex ( 4,3 ) passes through ( 5,2 ) vertical axis
5 Dec 2019 at 7:09 am [Comment permalink]
@Bare: This would be a good question for this part of the IntMath Forum: Plane Analytic Geometry - Intmath Forum
14 Jun 2020 at 7:38 pm [Comment permalink]
If AOB is a sector of a circle with measure of (<AOB)=45 DEGREE and radius of the circle O is 6 cm whats the arc AB
22 Nov 2020 at 12:35 pm [Comment permalink]
Enter the numeric value of (A, B, C, D, E) from the following three formulas.
However, A, B, C, D, E represent numbers between 0 and 9.
Default:
* Answer of number two questions. *
AC x 1E = 4CD (1)
ADE - 1EC = AB (2)
AB + E9 = 11A (3)
Example: If F = 1, G = 2, then 3FG would be 312.
The numbers of the same letters in all three formulas are the same.
23 Jan 2021 at 12:21 pm [Comment permalink]
Enter the numeric value of (A, B, C, D, E) from the following three formulas.
However, A, B, C, D, E represent numbers between 0 and 9.
Default:
* Answer of number two questions. *
AC x 1E = 4CD (1)
ADE - 1EC = AB (2)
AB + E9 = 11A (3)
Example: If F = 1, G = 2, then 3FG would be 312.
The numbers of the same letters in all three formulas are the same.