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You can access Mathercize here provided you know the password for your group.
  • Maths/Stats/COMO students: the password is on the main Maths noticeboard in the foyer of Science III, and is also announced by all lecturers.
  • Other departments: see your lecturer.


Mathercize was written by John Shanks. It began in 1998 as a Mac OS version with several modules of questions designed to help those students in Math 151 with a weak background in mathematics. A Windows version was written in 2000, and the on-line version was added in 2002. Questions have been written mainly by Summer Research students funded by the Science Division or participating departments: Anna Santure, Katie Enlow, Matthew Schofield, Paul Young and Iain Dangerfield. The Mathercize system features both a question editor and the application itself. A modified version of Mathercize is used for running Skills Tests that form part of the internal assessment for many of the 100-level Math papers.

Mathercize

Mathercize is a self-testing on-line computerized exercise system, with various programs in mathematics and statistics. It is available to students at Otago that are enrolled in authorized courses.

To us this on-line system, you need a recent browser and a password. Users log-on using their own student ID and a password supplied by the Department. Different passwords are used to supply different exercise programs for different groups of students. At present programs have been tailored for Maths/Stats/COMO, Economics, Physics, Clothing & Textiles, Zoology, Genetics and Pharmacy. Except for the first group, the accent is on remedial and basic maths skills.

  • Each group is offered a selection of programs which may focus on remedial math skills or exercises on course material.
  • Within each program there are usually several topics (such as fractions, proportions, basic differentiation, vectors, polynomials).
  • Within each topic there are several sets of questions, each set consisting of 10 similar questions on one aspect of the topic.
  • A help screen is provided when requested by the user, or when several wrong answers have been supplied for any one particular question.
  • The user receives instant feedback, and is assured that no records are kept of personal success.
  • Some questions provide hints if required by the user.
  • Some questions require a calculator, and the user can use a personal calculator or a virtual calculator that appears on screen.
  • Some questions are randomised so that they will generally differ in detail if the present set of questions is attempted again.

The non-judgemental and private nature of Mathercize provides a low-stress, supportive environment for study and mastery of many skills.

A typical question:

This is taken from the Linear Programming topic of the Math 151 program.