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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.

30 Comments on “Top 10 math help sites”

  1. Maria Droujkova says:

    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/

  2. Murray says:

    Thanks, Raj. My list includes specifically forums where users can ask questions, but Eduarrow appears to be tutorials only.

  3. David Binner says:

    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. Murray says:

    Hi David and thanks for the extra forum information.

    Through your blog I found your math javascript library. Impressive stuff!

  5. David Binner says:

    Here's one more:

    Free Math Help
    http://freemathhelp.com/forum/

  6. Colleen Young says:

    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

  7. Murray says:

    @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.

  8. Sudharaka says:

    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.

  9. Murray says:

    @Sudharaka: Thanks for the resource. All the best with it!

  10. Paul says:

    Another free resource related to math is Algebra-Calculus site.

  11. Murray says:

    @Paul: You have an error in the question in Example 2 on this page.

  12. Paul says:

    @Murray:Hello.
    Thanks for finding typo.
    Fixed.

  13. sarwar says:

    Good job done, I really found helpful this list.

  14. Raja Jee says:

    One more such useful mathematics site(ebooks):
    http://freecomputerbooks.pickatutorial.com/category/mathematics.htm

  15. Murray says:

    @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.

  16. Tan says:

    Nice Work Dr. Math for provide the best classes class for our children . Thanks for share it.

  17. Math Homework Help says:

    Nice post. Your post contains an awesome resource for math sites. These sites help students to resolve their maths issues instantly.

  18. Tom says:

    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. james says:

    Truth be told I have always thought it best to let my kids do their own homework, mistakes and all.

  20. Photomath says:

    Photomath is mobile app that allows math problem solving

  21. Websites That Will Help You Solve Your Math Problems – Math/Computer Science says:

    […] 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 […]

  22. Dave Peterson says:

    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

  23. Murray says:

    Thanks for reaching out, Dave. I've amended my post.

    Good luck with your new venture!

  24. Venky says:

    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.

  25. Murray says:

    @Venky: IF you need homework help, feel free to post your question on the IntMath Forum.

  26. bare muudee says:

    Please write equation of parabolla with vertex ( 4,3 ) passes through ( 5,2 ) vertical axis

  27. Murray says:

    @Bare: This would be a good question for this part of the IntMath Forum: Plane Analytic Geometry - Intmath Forum

  28. siham tewekel says:

    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

  29. Aung Phyo Oo says:

    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.

  30. Rishi says:

    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.

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