What you do in Times Table Master
Pick any mix of times tables from 2 to 15 (12 questions for each table), or let the AI coach mix the tables up to 12 or up to 15 until you get 20 right in a row.
- Answer on the keypad, or switch on Write-it Mode and write each answer by hand.
- The AI coach brings back the facts you miss, a little later rather than straight away.
- Your Progress screen colours every fact from 1 × 1 to 12 × 12 and can start a review of your weakest facts.
Try it: 10 seconds
No pressure. Just see how it feels.
7 × 8 = ?
Show the answer
56
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Doc explains
Your memory loves a comeback! If you cram 7 × 8 ten times in a row, it gets lazy. If 7 × 8 pops back after you have nearly forgotten it, your memory has to work a little, and that is exactly what makes it stick. I keep a little notebook on every fact, and your Progress screen's review invites the shaky ones back at the right moment.
The science idea
Spaced repetition: practising a fact several times with gaps in between, instead of all at once.
The opposite is cramming, or massed practice: doing it many times in a row. Cramming can feel productive in the moment, but over hundreds of experiments, spreading practice out has won for long term memory.1
Spacing works best together with retrieval practice: answering from memory each time the fact comes back, rather than just reading it. A large review of ten study techniques rated those two, practice testing and spreading practice out, as the most useful of all.2
What the research found
A large review of ten common study techniques rated practice testing and distributed practice as the two most useful, because they helped learners of different ages and abilities on many kinds of tests, including in real classrooms.2
A synthesis of 317 experiments found that spacing practice out beats massing it together, and that the best gap between practice sessions grows the longer you want to remember.1 In a math experiment, college students who split ten practice problems across two sessions a week apart did far better on a test four weeks later than students who did all ten at once, although there was no difference after one week. Doing extra problems in a single session made no difference.3
Not every fact needs the same amount of practice. Records from 15,402 children in grades 3 to 5 showed that facts with 4, 5, 6 and 7 needed more repetitions than the 2s and 3s, and that children with weaker math skills needed more repetitions overall.4
How Times Table Master uses it
- Every answer you give, here and in the classic workouts, feeds a memory model of each fact, such as 7 × 8: a strength box from 0 to 5. A right answer moves it up one box, or two if you answered in under 3.5 seconds, and a miss drops it two boxes.
- Each box has a memory half-life in a simple forgetting model, from 25 minutes for box 0 up to 30 days for box 5, so the stronger a fact is, the longer before review brings it back. That follows the finding that longer gaps suit longer memories.1
- The Progress screen's review rounds use the model: they pick the facts that are due, weakest first, so the facts that need more repetitions get them.4 A fact counts as due when its modelled chance of being remembered drops below 70%, or while it is still in a low box.
- Inside a Times Table Master round, a picked-tables round asks every fact of each table, and the AI coach asks a missed fact again later in the same round.
- Every answer comes from your own memory, so each review is also retrieval practice.2
- The box rules, the 25 minute to 30 day half-lives, the 70% line and the 20 in a row goal are the app's design choices, not values any study tested.
What this does and doesn’t mean
It does mean
- Meeting a fact again after a gap, and answering it from memory, is one of the best tested ways to remember it for longer.
- Some times tables need more practice than others, so practice that follows each fact makes sense.
It doesn’t mean
- The spacing synthesis mostly studied verbal recall such as words and facts, often in the lab, and the math experiment tested college students on one kind of problem.1,3
- The repetitions study counted what children needed inside a practice program. It is not a test of any particular spacing schedule.4
- Write-it Mode is a choice of how to answer, not a learning boost. In one study of 55 seventh graders solving equations, students who wrote by hand solved more and were faster, but they did not learn significantly more, and handwriting with a mouse instead of a touch screen made things worse. We found no study of handwriting versus typing for times tables.5
- The studies below tested their own tasks with their own volunteers. They did not test Math Workout.
References
Written in APA 7 style. Tap a number in the text to jump here, and the arrow to jump back.
- 1
Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354-380. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354
- 2
Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4-58. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266
- 3
Rohrer, D., & Taylor, K. (2006). The effects of overlearning and distributed practise on the retention of mathematics knowledge. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 20(9), 1209-1224. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1266
- 4
Burns, M. K., Ysseldyke, J., Nelson, P. M., & Kanive, R. (2015). Number of repetitions required to retain single-digit multiplication math facts for elementary students. School Psychology Quarterly, 30(3), 398-405. https://doi.org/10.1037/spq0000097
- 5
de Morais, F., & Jaques, P. A. (2022). Does handwriting impact learning on math tutoring systems? Informatics in Education, 21(1), 55-90. https://doi.org/10.15388/infedu.2022.03 Free to read
Science last checked: 2026-11-05
