Parth Behani, a ninth grade student in Bengaluru, is challenged to look ‘beyond the obvious’ to solve math problems every weekend. For Behani, mathematics is a discovery of possibilities rather than just knowing formulas and scoring marks.

Behani’s enthusiasm and attitude is thanks to Jed-i, an education startup, where math is taught purely for the joy of learning. Startups like Jed-i are trying to fundamentally change the way a student approaches math. “It’s a different approach to math. You are actually challenged to think,” said Behani.

Jed-i is run by V Vinay, a former professor at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), who co-invented the Simputer, an indigenous hand-held computer, in the early 2000s. Vinay focusses on “giving a glimpse of what lies ahead.”

“If you see a Rahul Dravid play or a Sachin Tendulkar play, you would know that you are watching a high-class player. In any other branch, that benchmark is already there. In mathematics, you do not know what they are, you have no idea of what is coming,” said Vinay.

Vinay’s three-hour classes, where students work in teams, are divided into two parts — attempting long winding problems and teaching basics of new concepts. New concepts give an idea of what exists in the vast world of math.

An integral part of these math startups is to use puzzles to stoke the student’s interest. Manan Khurma, Founder of Cuemath, a Sequoia India and Unitus Seed Fund-backed math learning startup, often poses a puzzle wherein students are asked to write numbers from one to 10 and then insert plus and minus between numbers so that the final answer is zero. But the catch is, the solution to this puzzle is non-existent, because the total from one to 10 is 55, which is an odd number and hence cannot be divided into equal parts that can cancel each other.

“Students do not think in this perspective because in school, they are taught that there is one right answer,” said Khurma.

Cuemath, which is present in Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Chennai, uses gamified learning, worksheets and puzzles to teach mathematics to students till class eight, with teacher supervision.

If puzzles are one way to enrich understanding, visualisation is another. Byju’s, a funded ed-tech platform, is attempting just that, through mobile content. A typical Byju’s video would involve gamified content to simplify a concept. For example, a teacher would literally ‘push down’ a diameter of a circle to make it a chord.

“Use of technology can help make math visual and contextual. Learning math this way helps the student understand not just the “what” of learning, but the “why” and the “how” as well,” said Byju Raveendran, CEO of Byju’s.

Source: The Economic Times