Math Studio for Windows

Home schoolers, high school tutors, and students needing additional mathematics study will find this many-featured app a handy addition to their toolbox. It provides assistance for grasping two-dimensional function graphs with animation, analyzing functions, understanding analytic geometry, solid geometry, and more.

Math Studio launches a three-paned interface similar to the familiar e-mail client design: the upper-left vertical pane is a graph manager, the lower-left pane is a result editor, and the large pane on the right is a plotting area for displaying graphs. However, the cluster of icons in the three toolbars aligned along the interface's top may intimidate novices during their initial use. With familiarity, though, users will develop confidence to navigate the app capably. This app performed nicely during our tests. The Help file provides solid direction in using Math Studio's features, and the Demo command's array of examples demonstrate the results the user should aim for. The buttons and dialog boxes responded quickly to our clicks, including when we added a point to an existing graph. The animation features performed very smoothly, and we liked that we could save and export the animations for later review.

Although the publisher's description says some features are disabled in the free version--the description doesn't specify which functions--we didn't encounter any of these limitations during our tests. But it's clear from our work with Math Studio that jumping into using this app without some sort of guidance isn't the best way to learn about function graphs--we advise relying on this app as a complement to a text book or study guide.