Set of Problem-Oriented Mobile Apps for Mathematical Skills Development
Download the set of 21 problem-oriented apps for basic mathematical skills onto your mobile device from Google Play store:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vizuali.m_easy
The main aim of this Set of the Problem-Oriented Mobile Apps is to provide learners with an opportunity to deepen their mathematical competence by improving basic mathematical skills and knowledge.
The Set covers 27 mathematical skills and is based on the real-life situations. This approach allows developing the learners’ ability to apply obtained knowledge immediately in their daily activities for work or personal life.
The Set “M-Easy” consists of the 21 Problem-Oriented situations for Android and provides two main possibilities to arrange learners’ self-training process:
- If you know the mathematical skills you want to improve, the system can suggest you the relevant Mobile Apps to perform. To proceed with this learning pathway, please select the skills from the table, click here.
- If you want to use a specific Mobile App, please select it from the list, click here.
Mathematical skills
List of apps related to chosen skills
Baking a tart
Description of the real-life situation:
You have a recipe for a tart. However, you have got fewer eggs than required in the recipe. So, you are going to bake a smaller tart. For that you need to reduce the amount of all products at the same proportion as the eggs’ number you have differs from the eggs’ number in the recipe.
Also, you are curious about the amount of calories you eat so you want to know what a piece of the tart in grams you could eat per day in order not to exceed your daily norm of calories for sweets. The recipe only tells you how many calories will be in the whole tart.
You want to bake the tart and you decide to decorate it with a ribbon around it, so it looks better, but you need to calculate how long the ribbon needs to be.
Also, you are going to put glaze on the top of the tart, and you need to calculate the area of the tart to see how much glaze you will have to use.
Maths skills covered:
multiplication, division, understanding proportions, calculating area of a circle, calculating perimeter of a circle.
Go to M-Easy app on mobile device with Android operating system and fulfill the exercise.
Family Savings
Description of the real-life situation:
A good family budget policy is to have family savings for unexpected future expenses. One common situation when you need to rely on your savings is the extension of your family with the birth of a new baby. Thus, you need to save money, not only for buying baby clothes and other baby staff, but also to re-arrange the rooms to make them more comfortable for the new situation. With this exercise you can learn how to calculate the amount of money you need to save for such a situation.
Maths skills covered:
addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, compare numbers.
Go to M-Easy app on mobile device with Android operating system and fulfill the exercise.
Smart shopping
Description of the real-life situation:
You are going shopping, either to a supermarket or to a store. You can buy only stuff you can afford from your rather small budget. Of course, the less you spend on each item, the more you could afford to buy. Many shops have special offers with discounts, and you could use this opportunity. Thus, you need to know how to calculate how much you will pay after the discount and if the offer is good for you. You may also want to calculate the approximate price of the things you have taken from a shop just to check if you have got enough cash to pay. Another basic thing you need to know are the different measures you will see in the supermarket and their conversions i.e. metres to centimetres or euros to cents.
Maths skills covered:
subtraction, multiplication, division, calculate percentage, operate with fractions, perform rounding.
Go to M-Easy app on mobile device with Android operating system and fulfill the exercise.
Calculating time
Description of the real-life situation:
You are going to a meeting that is set up at a certain time. You know how long it takes to travel to the meeting place by car. So, you need to calculate the time that allows you to be on time at the meeting. Your digital watch is not working, and you will take your analogue one, thus you need to know how to read the time on the analogue watch. You also have to understand how to convert the hours to minutes and vice versa.
Maths skills covered:
addition, compare numbers, understand analogue clock.
Go to M-Easy app on mobile device with Android operating system and fulfill the exercise.
Shopping for cakes
Description of the real-life situation:
You are going to throw your child‘s birthday party. You plan to host guests. You are going shopping and plan to buy a cake. There is also a possibility to buy cupcakes instead. However, today is a special day and the bakery offers a discount for cakes. Choose which, the cake or the cupcakes, is more profitable for you to buy?
Maths skills covered:
subtraction, multiplication, calculate percentage, work with different measures (millimetres, centimetres, metres, inches, yards, etc.), operate with whole numbers, operate with decimal fractions, compare numbers (<,>).
Go to M-Easy app on mobile device with Android operating system and fulfill the exercise.
Drinking water
Description of the real-life situation:
Do you often hear that you should drink a lot of water, but what does “a lot” mean to you?
Should everyone drink the same amount of water? What does it depend on and how can it be checked?
This exercise will help you: calculate how many glasses of water you should drink during the day (based on weight, height, sex and physical activity), with the possibility of showing historical data. At the same time you will be able to practice your mathematical abilities in the field of comparing numbers, performing division and performing multiplication.
Maths skills covered:
multiplication, division, compare numbers.
Go to M-Easy app on mobile device with Android operating system and fulfill the exercise.
Family holiday
Description of the real-life situation:
You are the father of two children, planning a family trip. Last year you were at the seaside. You managed to save 10 % of your home budget. However, your personal situation has just changed. Your wife now works half-time instead of full-time, so you started reconsidering how much percent of your home budget you must save in order to guarantee your family the same holiday experience as the last year. You also predict that prices related to travelling will go up 5% this year.
Maths skills covered:
addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, calculate percentage.
Go to M-Easy app on mobile device with Android operating system and fulfill the exercise.
Planning time for cleaning
Description of the real-life situation:
You are a very busy person. You have many professional duties, but also many home duties. You know that the day lasts 24 hours. You get up at 7 a.m. You are 8 hours at work from 8 a.m. till 4 p.m., additionally it takes you 30 minutes to travel to/from work. You need 2 hours to prepare dinner and then 1 hour to have a meal with your family. You have a house with an area of 157,5 m2 and you can approximately clean 1m2 in 4 minutes (both vacuuming and cleaning). You have a plan to go to sleep at 11 p.m.
You have to clean up the whole house, how much time in hours and finally in days can you spend on it?
Maths skills covered:
addition, subtraction, multiplication, division.
Go to M-Easy app on mobile device with Android operating system and fulfill the exercise.
Inherited Land
Description of the real-life situation:
You inherited a part of the land from a bigger plot and you want to know precisely, how big is the plot in order to protect the plot, take care of it and start some activity on the plot in the future. The first steps could be to calculate the size of the plot, length of its sides, calculate how many metres of the fence and it’s segments you will need to protect your property.
Maths skills covered:
multiplication, division, calculate percentage, perform rounding, calculate square roots.
Go to M-Easy app on mobile device with Android operating system and fulfill the exercise.
Renovating the floor
Description of the real-life situation:
Living in a beautiful house inspires good mood. Only four steps are needed and you will be ready to renovate the floor of your house:
- Calculate the floor perimeter of your room to know how many meters are around the room.
- Calculate the floor area of your room in order to buy a carpet.
- Calculate a quantity of concrete for floor levelling.
- Calculate a quantity of skirting boards for the floor.
Maths skills covered:
addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, calculation of the rectangle perimeter, calculation of the rectangle area, calculation of the cuboid volume.
Go to M-Easy app on mobile device with Android operating system and fulfill the exercise.
Renovating walls
Description of the real-life situation:
Living in a beautiful house inspires good mood. Only three steps and you will be ready to start renovation of the walls in your house:
- Choose the right formula to calculate the wall area of your room.
- Calculate the quantity of wallpaper for the wall of your room.
- Calculate the quantity of tiles for the wall of your kitchen.
Maths skills covered:
multiplication, division, recognize a rectangle, calculate an area of rectangle, operate with different units for measurements.
Go to M-Easy app on mobile device with Android operating system and fulfill the exercise.
Getting a loan
Description of the real-life situation:
You are going to renovate your home and it occurs that your calculated expenses will exceed your savings for renovation. Therefore, you would like to evaluate a possibility to take a loan from a bank. However, while taking a loan, you have to pay interest for the bank, so the loan repayment amount for the bank will be bigger than the amount of money you have lent. Thus, for the evaluation of feasibility of taking a loan, you need to know how to calculate the following:
- the bank’s interest to be paid yearly;
- loan repayment amount in certain period and
- the approximate monthly loan repayment amount in order to be able to compare it with the numbers from your budget.
* Please note that in this exercise the calculations are only approximate, as banks use some further specifics in loan calculations, e.g. as administrative charges.
Maths skills covered:
addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, calculate percentage.
Go to M-Easy app on mobile device with Android operating system and fulfill the exercise.
Buying on credit
Description of the real-life situation:
You want to change furniture at your home. However, it turns out that the price of your desired furniture exceeds your savings. Your selected furniture shop suggests the customer-friendly finance option to get up to 3 years (36 months) interest-free credit to pay for the furniture per month. Check your budget and write the sum you are able to pay as initial payment - just a part of the whole furniture cost.
This exercise will help you:
- to calculate how much you would have to pay monthly;
- to compare the result of monthly payment with your abilities to pay this amount from your monthly budget;
- and to calculate the shortest period of the payment you may afford with your budget.
Maths skills covered:
subtraction, division, compare numbers.
Go to M-Easy app on mobile device with Android operating system and fulfill the exercise.
Building a pool
Description of the real-life situation:
You have a summer house in the countryside, and there is a nice and friendly neighbourhood of summer residencies around there.
You and your neighbours have decided to install a joint round above ground swimming pool on your co-shared limited size area. You are going to share all the expenses of purchase, installation and maintenance of the pool. In order to start calculations, first you have to measure whether the swimming pool will fit into your co-shared area and how much water will be needed to fill it.
Thus, first you need to measure the size of a field for the swimming pool in order to find out, what could be the optimal diameter of the swimming pool that would fit into the field chosen. Secondly, you must decide the preferred depth/height of the pool and calculate the volume of the swimming pool, then calculate how many litres of water you will need for filling it. You plan to take water from a well; however, there could be a shortage of water or even no water in summertime. There is a company in a town nearby that offers a service of bringing potable water to your place transporting it in a water tank trucks. That water service equipment was produced in the UK, thus, the volume is measured not in litres, but in gallons. Thus, to make an order for water in gallons you will need to convert the litres into gallons.
Maths skills covered:
multiplication, recognize different, geometric shapes, calculate area of circle, calculate volume of cylinder, operate with whole numbers, operate with decimal fractions, calculate square numbers, work with different measures, understand different measuring systems (metric, imperial, etc.).
Go to M-Easy app on mobile device with Android operating system and fulfill the exercise.
Calculating travel budgets
Description of the real-life situation:
How to create a travel budget:
Let us say you wish to travel to the USA for touristic reasons, but you are not sure if you can cover such a big trip. You decide that you have a specific budget of X money (amount calculated in EUROS) and you wish to see if with this budget the trip is possible. In order to decide if this trip is feasible, you decide to calculate the expenses. The expenses can be:
- Bus tickets to the airport (Roundtrip)
- Airplane tickets (Roundtrip)
- Bus tickets to the hotel (Roundtrip)
- Hotel expenses
- Daily meals
- Museums expenses
- Souvenirs
- Transportation around the city
- Other expenses that may come up (could be a new pair of walking shoes/a new charger/a blanket, etc.)
- Currency exchange.
Maths skills covered:
addition, multiplication, compare numbers.
Go to M-Easy app on mobile device with Android operating system and fulfill the exercise.
Measuring a plot
Description of the real-life situation:
You have got an A m2 square shape farmstead plot. Three sides of the plot are fenced in green hedge, one side is open.
You would like to fence it and lay out a stone tiles path across the plot. Calculate how many metres of the fence you will need and what will be the length of the path.
You also plan to have a colourful flower feature on your land in the circle shape as seen in a foreign (UK) magazine, where area measurement was presented in feet. You will need to calculate the flowerbed area and diameter in meters, in order to prepare the space for flower planting.
Maths skills covered:
multiplication, division, rounding, understand different measuring systems calculate square roots.
Go to M-Easy app on mobile device with Android operating system and fulfill the exercise.
Building a sandbox
Description of the real-life situation:
You are going to create a backyard play area for your kids. As you know, a sandbox brings a little bit of the beach into your backyard, and playtime is even more fun when the box itself has an imaginative shape. You are going to equip a right-angled triangle sandbox for your child in the corner of your yard.
Maths skills covered:
subtraction, multiplication, calculate percentage, work with different measures (millimetres, centimetres, metres, inches, yards, etc.), operate with whole numbers, operate with decimal fractions, compare numbers (<,>).
Go to M-Easy app on mobile device with Android operating system and fulfill the exercise.
Caring for household
Description of the real-life situation:
You use liquid soap in your household. Every family member has his favorite soap container in different shapes: pyramid, cylinder, sphere and cube. You constantly take care that these containers are fresh and full and buy monthly the same amount of liquid soap to fill them. However, this week supermarket X offers a discount for large packages of liquid soap. You decided to take advantage of this opportunity and to buy liquid soap for the half-year period instead of buying it monthly.
Maths skills covered:
addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, calculate percentage, work with different measures (millimetres, centimetres, metres, inches, yards, etc.), operate with whole numbers, recognise different geometrical shapes: rectangle, square, triangle, circle, pyramid, cuboid, cube, sphere, calculate area of rectangle & square, calculate area of triangle, calculate area of circle, calculate volume of cuboid & cube, calculate volume of cylinder, calculate volume of sphere, calculate volume of pyramid, operate with fractions, operate with decimal fractions, calculate square numbers.
Go to M-Easy app on mobile device with Android operating system and fulfill the exercise.
Data reading
Description of the real-life situation:
You are planning changes in your life; you want to start a new chapter in another apartment and maybe in another country. Choose a prosperous country, buy a flat and get ready for a trip.
Looking for a new country to live in, you decide to compare the countries you are interested in: Belgium, Estonia, Netherlands, Germany, Poland in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) at purchasing power parity per capita (current prices) in current international dollars.
Maths skills covered:
compare numbers; extracting of the data from charts, statistics, perform addition.
Go to M-Easy app on mobile device with Android operating system and fulfill the exercise.
Ordering
Description of the real-life situation:
You don’t have any plan for the weekend, so you decide to stay at home. You would like to have a rest, thus you choose to order some food instead of making it.
Maths skills covered:
addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, work with different measures, operate with whole numbers, operate with decimal fractions, recognise different geometrical shapes, compare values, calculate area of a circle.
Go to M-Easy app on mobile device with Android operating system and fulfill the exercise.
Analysing salary data from charts
Description of the real-life situation:
Sometimes we receive information not only in numbers but also in charts. Learn how to read and understand such data.
Maths skills covered:
addition, subtraction, compare numbers, extracting of the data from charts, statistics.
Go to M-Easy app on mobile device with Android operating system and fulfill the exercise.
