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For many school age kids doing math homework—especially without the help of a tutor or parent who knows the material—can be so frustrating that they just give up. Thanks to a new Web site that may be starting to change for Berkeley’s young math-phobes.  

Called Hotmath.com, the website is the brainchild of Chuck Grant, a former computer science professor at Cal and the co-founder of Northstar computers.  

The idea for the website was born three years ago when he found himself volunteering as a math teacher at a continuation school in Orinda.  

“Getting those kids to do homework was impossible,” says Grant. He reasoned that the problem was that his students weren’t making any headway so they just threw in the towel. 

After consulting some friends including Bob Bekes, chairman of the math department at Santa Clara University, Grant decided that what his students needed was an online tutor to help them get their homework problems done. 

Students logging onto Hotmath.com discover not only solutions to many of the math problems they face in class, but hints as well. For instance, for a word problem that asks students to identify the three consecutive odd numbers that add up to 105 the hint they click on defines the word consecutive.  

“They don’t know what consecutive means. It’s a big word. So, the first hint is consecutive means one after the other. For example, 5 and 7 are consecutive odd numbers,” says Grant, 58. “Let the kids get the answers they need that a tutor would give them, that mommy or daddy would give them if they had that available help.” 

According to Grant, a Kensington resident, it’s critical for students’ understanding to have solutions to math problems but most textbooks only give a few. 

“The way the normal math textbook presents the information to describe a concept they give three examples of how to apply it to a problem and then there’s a hundred problems that the teacher selects to assign for homework,” says Grant. 

“Some kids get the idea right away. Some kids get what it’s all about by looking at one of the examples in the book. Some get it by looking at two. Some by three. Books can’t be any bigger and heavier than they are now so the kids that take four or more examples are screwed.” 

Research bears out Grant’s point. In a study from the Texas schools presented on the Hotmath.com Web site, two groups of math students were given the same set of problems. 

One group was just assigned the problems; the other was assigned problems with solutions. Kids given the solutions outperformed the ones “who were just forced to struggle,” says Grant. 

“If a problem is hard and you don’t know how to get started, what do you learn? You learn nothing. If someone shows you how to do it, you learn something.” 

Initially launched as a free advertiser-supported website, Hotmath.com began charging for the service earlier this month in light of the soft market for Internet advertising. 

Over 300 school districts nationwide including Berkeley have signed up and pay $300 to offer it to their students for free. Students not attending a Hotmath.com school can access the Website for an entire school year for $29. By last April, the site was avewraging 150,000 hits per month from students. 

Grant launched the Web site with a combination of donated effort and cash from himself and investors totalling in “the low seven figures.”  

Berkeley schools use the service in conjunction with mathbooks from College Preparatory Mathematics, which pays for Hotmath.com access. The publishing company covers costs of site access for all schools using their textbook. The publisher provides most of the seventh grade through pre-calculus textbooks used in Berkeley. 

When Grant started the website, he and his network of 80 math professors and teacher contributors would give all the answers to problems assigned students.  

They had to rethink their strategy after teachers complained that “you’re making it too easy for them” by offering students all the answers, depriving the kids of the joy of discovery. There was also concern that the site could become a resource for cheaters. Now Hotmath.com displays only the odd numbered problems. 

Although the site grew out of Grant’s concern that underprivileged kids were not getting the math help they needed to succeed, he realizes that those very same students may not have internet access in their homes.  

“Very early on we realized we’re helping the rich kids, when we started this wanting to help the poor kids,” says Grant.  

To counteract the so called “digital divide” between families that are online and those that are not, Grant instructs all teachers to make it clear to students where they can go for free Internet access in their communities. Generally these resources include school computer labs, libraries, YMCAs and other after school programs. Of course, for students in a town as wired as Berkeley Internet access isn’t as grave a concern as it might be elsewhere. 

“I’ll bet every kid in Berkeley who doesn’t have the Internet at home has a friend who does within five houses,” says Grant.