Debunked: 3 Common Misconceptions about Photomath
Comments on social media, tech conferences, job interviews. All have a common denominator: lots of people with lots of false assumptions about tech companies. I’ve been on the receiving end of such statements many times, and with hope to avoid them in the future, I’m bringing you the 3 most frequently heard falsehoods about Photomath and explain how they’re just that!
1. “You are just Image recognition + Wolfram Alpha”
If only I had a dollar for every comment I heard about Photomath being only a proxy app. An app that uses out-of-the-box OCR technology and Wolfram Alpha solving system to generate step-by-step solutions for math problems users scan with their phones. I would probably have a few dollars and if it were true I’d have no job to do. As a Solver team member I’ve been working on developing our solving algorithm to produce the best possible explanations for a wide range of math problems for 5 years now — and we are still nowhere near the end.
What distinguishes Photomath from other apps is that we take great care to have an algorithm which creates explanation steps a student is most familiar with: like it’s their teacher presenting it to them. Our MathR&D team does a lot of research on every math topic to find out how kids are learning math today. That is also why our solver keeps on improving with every new insight in methodology used both in class and textbooks. Hopefully it is evident why we can’t rely on external solutions as we aim to be the best learning companion.
As for using an out-of-the-box OCR (Optical Character Recognition) library, we did use one that was developed at our “origin” company Microblink — Photomath started as a project in Microblink and grew out to be a successful company in its own right. However, recently our AI team has developed our own state-of-the-art image recognition technology that goes beyond just being an OCR — it can truly understand the whole mathematical expression in the picture, and not just recognise its building blocks. Having our own technology enables us to further expand its capabilities — understand more complex problems and be ahead of the game.
2. “You’re just giving away answers! How will they learn?”
Many kids today have problems understanding math. It might happen that early in their education they fail to understand some concepts and later on find it impossible to comprehend a more complex curriculum. Teachers do their best to transfer their knowledge to students, but that’s done in a full classroom in a limited time slot. It’s hard for some students to ask a “basic” question in front of everybody, and teachers have a limited time they can focus on a particular problem and student. Just think about how many kids you know today need extra time with a 1on1 tutor after class.
This is a void that Photomath (successfully) fulfills! We take great care when designing mathematical procedures to help students learn and truly understand all the key concepts used in those steps. In step-by-step solutions, users can freshen up their knowledge of some mathematical terms with hints, and instead of just seeing how to get to the solution, they also get the answer to why some specific step was taken. We believe this not only helps users get unstuck, but also drives a true learning process.
We have also devised a whole new technology to explain things the way a teacher wishes they could on a whiteboard via Animated Tutorials. This technology explains math concepts through visual animations. Best to see it for yourself — see our Animated tutorials at work (👍 and subscribe to be the first one to see when we add something new)!
Imagine that in elementary school, you could have seen long division algorithm steps on any example you have — especially when it seems easy for the teacher to explain in class, but with your homework you just can’t get to the answer. Kids today don’t have to be limited to study by examples solved in a textbook or in an online tutorial. Photomath goes one step further, helping them to unlock all those “what if” questions they might have.
If you still don’t believe me, take a look at what our users have to say!
3. “Photomath developers are great at math!”
This might sound funny, but this is a fairly common statement our engineers hear when interviewing potential candidates. We’ve had developers who wanted to work on the Photomath app, but got concerned they were not a good fit because they were not that good at complex math.
Look, I work in a team that writes the solving algorithm, and even I don’t have to be a math expert — we have a dedicated team of them so that developers can focus on developing the app and other equally important products we have.
Photomath has been around for 7 years and the company has grown rapidly since its foundation. From a startup with a step-by-step calculator app to a complex system with multiple engineering teams working on products used by other employees and thousands of math experts around the globe. Most of the development of the app isn’t associated with math, but rather with complex web tools, services and mobile development.
So yeah, you can be meh at complex math and still apply for one of our open positions! :D
That’s all folks! Hope I’ve shed some light on how we do things at Photomath. If you’re interested in more, visit our web page or share your thoughts and questions in the comments — I’ll answer them in a follow-up!
Like what you’ve read? Learn more about #LifeAtPhotomath and check out our job postings: https://careers.photomath.com/
