Method Lab

What you do in Method Lab

Learn named mental math methods, like making ten, near doubles and rounding, one lesson at a time. Each lesson shows the method with an animated example, lets you try it with help and then without, and ends by comparing your speed before and after.

• 21 methods: five are free and sixteen more come with Pro.
• Doc points you to the methods that fit the sums you find slow.

Doc explains

The science idea

The idea is simple: before solving problems with a new method yourself, you study one that is already solved, so you can see every step and the order they come in. Across many studies, this has helped people learn math.¹

The help should not stay forever. Researchers found it works well to take the worked steps away gradually, so you move smoothly from studying to solving.² And help has a shelf life: support that helps beginners can stop helping, or even get in the way, once you know a method well.³

What the research found

A 2023 meta-analysis of 55 studies found that learning from worked examples gave a medium sized boost to math performance, both when learning a new skill and when practising it. Correct examples on their own worked best.¹

Taking help away step by step worked in a field experiment and two lab experiments: fading out worked steps helped learning on similar problems, and removing the last step first worked better than removing the first step first.² Techniques that help beginners can lose their value, or backfire, as learners gain expertise.³

Knowing when a method fits matters as well as knowing how. In a study of 70 seventh graders, students who compared two solution methods side by side gained more skill and more flexibility in choosing a method than students who studied the same methods one at a time.⁴

Where the research disagrees: one experiment found fading helped on similar problems but only helped on very different problems when combined with prompts to explain each step.⁵ Yet the 2023 meta-analysis found that adding prompts to explain worked examples lowered the average effect.¹ The field has not settled this.

How Method Lab uses it

• Watch: an animated worked example of the method, before you try anything yourself.¹
• Then a nearly finished problem where only the last step is left for you, which is the backward fading that worked best.²
• Guided practice uses a step strip that fades: from most steps shown, to blanks, to a single cue, to the bare sum. A clean answer takes one step of help away and a slip puts one back, so support shrinks as skill grows.³
• Spot it shows a sum where the method fits beside a near miss where it does not, so you learn when to use it. It is a lighter version of the side by side comparisons in the research.⁴
• A short mastery check, then a confirm check at least 20 hours later for the third star, which builds in spacing. Mix shuffles several methods together.⁶
• The "Why it works" note is optional, a middle path while the research disagrees about prompts.

What this does and doesn’t mean