Maths seems to be the most difficult school subject, regardless of the particular country in question. We won’t delve into the reasons behind this, although it’s true that pupils and students are also largely responsible for this, preferring to get ready-made answers to questions instead of actually reaching them by logic and common sense. This is why Microsoft Mathematics 4.0 seems like a controversial solution at first, as software solutions involving mathematics usually serve the purpose of simplifying problems rather than aiding tuition. Yet the truth is largely different - this program is an excellent educational tool, and may have been of particular interest to us because of another detail - the latest version has been entirely developed in Microsoft’s development centre here in Belgrade, where our offices are located, but in full cooperation with the company seat in Redmond.
Microsoft’s initial plan was to quit developing this software after the 3.0 version appeared. The Chinese development team that had been responsible for the application was assigned other tasks, and Microsoft Mathematics looked like an abandoned project by all means. In the meantime, a new Office version appeared (2010), and existing users wanted to see a new revision of Microsoft Mathematics plugin. This project was then assigned to the Belgrade development team, which took up the entire program later on. The “mathematical” part of the project consists of about ten programmers and took about eight months to be finished, from May to December last year. Its success is represented by the fact that it was downloaded more than 300.000 times since its official appearance on 12th January, and got to the “most downloaded” list on Microsoft’s website.
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Before development was even started, the Serbian development team faced a dilemma concerning the potential usage scenarios of this program, as well as its possible downsides - enabling students to solve formulae on the PC and merely copy the solutions. That dilemma is further deepened by the fact that this program even has the option of displaying the process of getting to the required solution. Psychologists were consulted about this concern, and the outcome was positive - according to the latter, even copying the result and the process that was used to reach it activates brain cells and helps learning; copy a particular solution several times and it’s bound to remain in your head at least partially. In order to avoid the copy/paste situation, a tiny, but effective trick has been implemented - the user (pupil or student) can only copy/paste the initial formula and the final result. Everything in between (which is thoroughly explained in English, by the way) has to be manually copied to the paper.
The program has yet another protection method. If the parents should still consider that the program is too helpful in solving problems (although that speaks more of the trust they have in their own child and his/her capabilities), there’s always the option to entirely turn off the solution method display. As far as the program’s educational character is concerned, it suffices to say that most of the beta-testing team consisted of maths teacher from local schools.
Popular maths programs such as Wolfram Mathematica or MatLab are primarily targeting professionals who require massive mathematical computations on a daily basis. Add to this a handful of technics university students, and that’s about as far as these programs’ user base goes. Although these programs also enable the entire solution tree to be displayed, they’re rather complicated to work with, and also very pricey. On the other hand, Microsoft Mathematics is free for home use from this version upwards (the previous version cost 20$), so even that obstacle has been removed.
