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MATH.DOC MIGHTY MATH INSTRUCTION MANUAL copyright (c) 1990, Robert Homes Table of Contents Notice and Disclaimer A Note to Parents and Teachers 1. Overview and description 2. System Requirements 3. File List 4. Installation 5. Starting and Quitting 6. The Main Menu 7. Using the Menus 8. Play 9. Options 10. Tables 11. Scoring 12. Review 13. Help 14. Quit 15. How Mighty Math Began 16. About Quick Study 17. Registration and Orders Notice and Disclaimer All rights reserved. Produced in the U.S.A. No part of this software and accompanying materials may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author. Permission is hereby given to copy and distribute the ShareWare (unregistered) version only, for evaluation purposes only, subject to the terms noted under "Enroll" or "Registration". Making copies of any part of the registered version of this software or accompanying materials for any purpose other than for your own personal use is a violation of United States and International copyright laws. For information, address Robert Homes, P. O. Box 500, Gulfport, MS 39502, USA. This software and accompanying materials are sold AS IS, without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, respecting the contents of same, including but not limited to implied warranties for the program's quality, performance, merchantability, or fitness for any particular purpose. Neither the author nor Brief*Case nor any other vendor or distributor shall be liable to the purchaser or any other person or entity with respect to any liability, loss, or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this software or accompanying materials. A Note to Parents and Teachers The usefulness of Mighty Math may be reduced a bit at first for very young children, and others who just can't type. A certain level of typing skill is required to use any computer program. Nevertheless, with a few adjustments, I think you'll find that even small children can enjoy and benefit from the program. Mighty Math doesn't require much typing on the normal keyboard. All answers to problems are in the form of numbers, and those who lack typing skills can still handle the number pad on a keyboard very well. Therefore, even small children should do fine after a little practice. A more serious problem for very young children is that when they are at the age of tackling the times tables for the first time they may not be capable of reading and understanding these instructions and help screens, or using the Menus in the program without help. Just read these help screens for them, choose the options they'll need to get started, and help them to get acquainted with Practice Mode with you nearby. You can help a great deal by setting up the Options a child needs at each stage of his learning process, and saving the Options with the Options/Keep command. This way, the same Options will be set each time the program is run. Later, when the child advances, you can change the Options to fit the level he or she has reached. Another way to make the program easier to use is to automate the Play or Test mode operation at start-up. When you run Mighty Math, you may enter a "switch" on the DOS command line to automate things a bit. This works only with the Registered version of the program. Using the switch, you can start Mighty Math to automatically go to the Play mode you specify and begin Play. The switches are : P (for Practice), T (Test), and D (Demo). A slash character (/) must be placed before a switch on the command line. For example: MATH /t starts the program in Test Play mode. Of course, all options affecting Play would be set as indicated by any configuration you may have saved previously with the Options/Keep command. If you help in these small ways, you can make sure your child's experience with Mighty Math is an enjoyable one, and the time learning the tables will be quick and painless! 1. Overview and description The purpose of Mighty Math is to help people, especially kids, learn the times tables as quickly and enjoyably as possible. The program also helps with Division, Addition, and Subtraction tables; but the focus is on the basic Multiplication tables. The two Play modes make up the heart of the program; the modes are Practice and Test. Both work essentially the same, the main difference being that Test mode keeps track of the time you take, and scores your results. The program keeps track of the top 10 high scores. If you play Test mode and score in the top 10, your name, the date, and your score are recorded on the high scores list. There are several Options you can set to control the way the Practice and Test modes work. You select the options you want to use, then start either Practice or Test mode. The main option you must select is the "Operator", -- the type of mathematical operator you want to work with: Multiplication (x), Addition (+), Subtraction (-), or Division (%). The First Table and Last Table options determine which tables you will work with, from 2 to 12. These and the other options are explained fully in this manual, and more concisely in the help screens which are available from within the program itself. 2. System Requirements - IBM PC computer or 100% compatible - MS-DOS, 3.0 or later - 500K free RAM memory - Color and hard disk helpful, but not necessary - 640K free disk space 3. File list MATH.EXE The Mighty Math program. MATH.OPL Menu library file required by program. MATH.HLP On-line Help file required by program. MATH.DOC The Mighty Math manual, in a disk file. You can print the manual with any word processor that can handle plain ASCII text (almost all can). This file may be viewed from within the program, using the Help/Guide feature. MATH.CFG Sample configuration file; sets options used in the Play modes when working problems. MATH.PFG Sample Printer configuration file; sets options used by Print modules. MATH.SCO Contains sample scores. You can erase this file and start your own scores file. If Mighty Math doesn't find a MATH.SCO file, it will create one in the current directory. MATH.WRO Sample Wrong file; used to review problems. MATH.BUG A plain ASCII text file to use for keeping notes about any bugs you may find in the program. (I hope you never have to use it. But if you do, I hope you will do so freely, and send me a copy with your comments.) INVOICE.DOC A sample invoice form to use in registering the program or ordering additional copies. Remember, if you register, you'll receive an additional program free, and it is excellent. README.DOC Contains notes of recent program additions and corrections, description of program, and brief start-up instructions. DEMO.BAT, Files needed to run Quick Study Demo. All 3 STUDY.DBD, must be in the current directory. To run the RDEMO2.EXE demo, enter 'DEMO' at the DOS prompt. 4. Installation First write-protect your original program disk, make a copy of it, and store the original in a safe place; use the copy to install and run the program. Write-protect the copy also. If you don't know how to make copies of files and disks, consult the DOS manual or ask someone with more computer experience before going further. The program files are "archived" in one file, called MATH.ZIP. The PKUNZIP program is provided for de-archiving the files. For automatic installation, use the INSTALL program provided on the distribution disk. For manual installation, use PKUNZIP directly to de-archive and copy the files. To get help with PKUNZIP, go to the directory where the PKUNZIP.EXE files is located, and enter "PKUNZIP" without parameters. (a) Note regarding floppy disk installation Note that to install Mighty Math on a 360k floppy disk, you may need to omit some files. The files most easily lost are those that contain the Quick Study Demo: DEMO.BAT, RDEMO2.EXE, and STUDY.DBD; these may have been included on your distribution disk, and if so, you may leave them off the copy. (b) Special installation options You can, if you want, run Mighty Math from a directory other than the one where you store the Mighty Math files. However, to do this, you must follow some important rules. These rules require that you know some advanced DOS commands, and how to create and use batch files. If you don't know DOS that well yet, skip this section for now. Mighty Math needs three files to run: the program file MATH.EXE, the Menu Library file, MATH.OPL, and the on-line Help file, MATH.HLP. If you want to use the Help/Guide feature, the manual file, MATH.DOC, must also be present. These files must all be in the same directory. You can, if you wish, delete the rest of the files from your hard disk directory or floppy disk copy. Moreover, Mighty Math keeps track of the directory it is stored in, regardless of which directory or drive you are in when you run it. For example, if MATH.EXE, MATH.OPL, MATH.HLP, and MATH.DOC are in the directory C:\MM and you are in the directory D:\WORK you can start Mighty Math by entering this at the DOS prompt: C:\MM\MATH Or you could put the C:\MM directory in your Path with the DOS command path C:\MM and run Mighty Math from any other directory just by typing "MATH" at the DOS prompt. Another approach could be to create a batch file to run the program, and put the batch file in a directory on your default path. Many users put their batch files in a directory called C:\BAT and keep that directory in the path setting at all times. A sample batch file might contain these commands: :MATH.BAT @echo off C:\MM\MATH Or, you could create a separate batch file for each person who intends to use the program on your system. Each batch file could put the user in his or her own special directory before invoking the program. For example: :BOB.BAT @echo off c: cd \bob C:\MM\MATH With this batch file, Bob could simply enter "BOB" at the DOS prompt to switch to the C:\BOB directory and run Mighty Math from there. All these techniques share a common goal: to set things up so that you can run Mighty Math from any directory in your system. And Mighty Math will let you do this; it doesn't care where you run it from, as it can always find its help file (MATH.HLP), library file (MATH.OPL), and manual file (MATH.DOC) as long as those files are in the same directory as MATH.EXE. However, there is one important condition you must heed if you run Mighty Math from a different directory than the one it is stored in. That is, you must be aware of the fact that Mighty Math needs to read and write four data support files: MATH.CFG, MATH.PFG, MATH.SCO, and MATH.WRO. You must not have any files with these names (unless they are Mighty Math files, of course!) in any directory you intend to run Mighty Math from. If you have any such files, you may run into two problems by running Mighty Math from the directory where they reside. First, Mighty Math may not start properly; it will attempt to read and use the data from one or more of these files, and will find the data incompatible; this may cause the program to halt suddenly without explanation, or exhibit other strange behavior. Second, Mighty Math may destroy your existing files with these names, by writing new files with the same names. The parts of the Mighty Math program that can create these disk files are: - Menu item Options/Keep creates the file MATH.CFG - Menu item Group/Print/Keep creates the file MATH.PFG - Menu item Review/Keep creates the file MATH.WRO - Making a top 10 score in Test mode creates MATH.SCO Each of these four files, if created, will be placed in the current DOS directory (the area of your hard or floppy disk you were in when you started the program). No warning is given when any of these files is created, so you must make sure you have no files with these names that aren't part of the Mighty Math system in any directory in which you intend to use Mighty Math. After reading the foregoing, you may decide not to run the risk of using Mighty Math from other directories; and it is a simple matter to go to the Mighty Math directory whenever you use the program. A batch file can make this automatic. But if you do decide to set things up so you can use the program from different directories (taking the precautions mentioned above), you may find this approach useful. For, it will allow several persons to use the program, and each user can keep his or her own configuration files (MATH.CFG and MATH.PFG), scores (MATH.SCO), and review file (MATH.WRO) in a dedicated directory just for that person. This would allow many students, or members of a family, to use the program on the same system without "stepping on each other's toes". 5. Starting and Quitting the Program To start the program, go to the Drive or directory where the Mighty Math files are stored, enter "MATH" at the DOS prompt, and press the ENTER key. (Or, use the advance techniques described in the preceding section.) The first screen you see is the Title Screen; it displays the name of the program and the copyright information. If the program is registered, the Serial Number will appear in the title window. If you're running an un-registered version, there will be a forced delay before you can go on. Press ENTER to leave the Title screen and go to the main menu. Once you are in the program, you can get help by selecting Help from the main menu. You can also press F1 to get immediate help about the particular activity or menu item you're on. To quit the program, select Quit from the main menu; a sub-menu appears with the choices "Yes" and "No" -- press "Y" to select "Yes". See the "Special Note to Parents and Teachers" at the front of this manual for a discussion of command line options available when starting the registered version of the program. 6. The Main Menu The 6 selections on the main menu are: ■ Play - work the problems ■ Options - set options to control play ■ Tables - view tables and high scores ■ Review - re-work problems you missed in Play ■ Help - get instuctions about the program ■ Quit - leave the program When you choose one of these topics, a sub-menu appears, with items that apply to that topic. See the descriptions of each topic in the following sections of this manual. 7. Using the Menus Use arrow keys and other cursor-pad keys to move through the menus. Cursor keys include Home, End, PgUp and PgDn. WordStar keys also work: thus, Ctrl-S moves left, Ctrl-D right, Ctrl-E up, and Ctrl-X down. Control key combinations like these may be written as follows: ^S (same as Ctrl-S). To enter a control key combination, hold the CONTROL key down while tapping the appropriate letter key. Select menu items by pressing the first letter of the item, or moving the bar highlight to the item and pressing ENTER. The SpaceBar acts like ENTER in many situations. Press the ESCAPE key to back out of menus and most information and help screens. The dot key (.) acts like ESCAPE throughout the program. The left and right arrow keys move left and right through the sub-menus; if used while a prompt screen is displayed, they usually return you to the menu system. 8. Play Before starting play, set desired values in the Options menu (see below). Then go the the Play menu and choose Practice, Test, or Demo mode. Press ESCAPE to abort play in any mode. You can also abort by pressing ^Q (Ctrl-Q); this by-passes the score and review screens that otherwise would appear when you end a play session. Practice and Test modes are similar; the chief difference is that timing and scoring aren't used in Practice. When an equation (like "2x2") is highlighted on the grid, you must type the answer. There's no need to press ENTER -- Mighty Math knows how long each answer should be. You can use BackSpace to go back and change the first part of an answer, but not after entering the last number. Thus, if the problem is "11x12", the answer is "132", and you enter the "1" and "3", you can back up, but you can't back up after entering the "2". When you enter a right answer, a "bomb" explodes and erases the question from the play grid. (The appearance of the bomb can be changed in the Options menu.) If you enter a wrong answer, the problem stays on the grid, but changes color. In Practice Mode, if the "Answer Help" option is set to 1 or 2, you may be shown the correct answer after you enter a wrong one. In Practice and Test modes, you're only allowed 2 wrong answers to a particular question. In Test Mode, there's an additional limitation -- when the total wrong answers reaches the number set in the "Wrong Allowed" option, Test mode terminates. In Test or Practice, you can skip a problem and put off answering it by pressing ENTER before starting to type an answer. While in Practice or Test mode, you can get help by pressing F1 or "?", toggle Sound on and off with ^S, and change the appearance of Bombs with ^B. 9. Options To change an option, go to the Options menu, and select the option you want to change; an option cycles through it's possible settings when you select it. The main option is the Operator. Possible Operators are: + (addition) x (multiplication) - (subtraction v (division) The Range setting determines how far from the first questions Mighty Math will go to get the next question. A Range of 1 forces the questions to proceed in the order presented; Range 2 forces the next question close to the first; Range 10 lets Mighty Math choose any question on the board. First and Last Table options set the first and last tables to work with; for example, set First to "2" and Last to "12" to work on the 2 through 12 tables. The "Wrong Allowed" option sets the number of wrong answers Mighty Math will allow before terminating play in Test mode; set this between 0 and 15. "Erase Grid" controls what happens when you enter a right answer; if this option is set to "Yes", the Question is erased from the Play Grid and replaced with a blank space; if Erase Grid is set off ("No"),the Question is replaced with the correct Answer. "Demo speed" sets the delay in Demo mode between display of questions and answers. "Bombs" sets the style of bombs that erase questions when you enter a right answer. "Sound" toggles the program sounds on/off. The "Priors Shown" option determines whether all or part of the questions in a particular table are shown on the Play screen. This option only applies when you choose a First Table greater than 2. What this option does is best seen and appreciated when you run the program; try setting the option on, then go to Play mode and use Test or Practice; then set the option off and return to Play mode to see the difference. "Color set" selects one of 9 color sets for the Play screen. The sets are: Blue Yellow Green Brown Cyan Gray Red Monochrome Magenta "Initialize" re-sets all options to their original default values. "Keep" saves option settings in the file MATH.CFG. Each time Mighty Math starts, it configures the options to the values in that file, if it exists; if MATH.CFG is not found in the current directory, the option values are set to the program defaults used by the Initialize option. 10. Tables The Tables menu offers several choices for viewing and printing the various tables, and seeing the lists of high Scores. See the separate topic on Scoring for a description of how scores are calculated and how to see the high scores. You can re-set the current Operation in the Tables Menu; this works the same as the similar item on the Options Menu. Choose View to display tables on the screen. When you select View, the tables for the current Operation are shown, starting with the table designated by the First Table option on the Options Menu. When viewing one table, use the ENTER key or SpaceBar to flip through the tables. The PgUp, PgDn, Home, and End keys also work. Press ESCAPE to exit from the Tables view. Choose Print to print one or more tables on the printer, or to a disk file. You can print any table from 0 to 99. Use the Scope item on the Print Menu to enter one or more tables to print. You can enter just one number, or several. Use commas and dashes to indicate which tables to print. For example the Scope entry 2,4-6,8 selects the 2, 4, 5, 6 and 8 tables to print. To print, first set the Print Options to any desired values, then select "Go" from the Print menu to start printing. You can re-direct printing to a disk file by setting the "Device Out" print option to FILE. The Print Option "Units" can be set to "One" or "All". Use the One setting to print just one Table. When Units is set to "All", each Table included in the Scope setting will be printed. You can press ESCAPE at any time to pause printing; when printing is paused, you have the option to continue, or abort printing. When you abort printing, Mighty Math still prints the rest of any Table it was printing at the time. If the Device Out option is set to PRINTER (rather than FILE), the printer may not stop immediately after you press ESCAPE or after the current Table is finished printing. This is due to the fact that characters may be stored in the printer's internal buffer. If this occurs, you must wait for the printer to finish printing what's left in its buffer, or turn the printer off manually. The Tables to be printed will be for the current Operator. See the on-line context-sensitive Help System for help with each individual Print Option. You can change and save print settings before printing. Remember, to start printing, select "Go" from the Print Menu. 11. Scoring To see the lists of High Scores, select Scores from the Tables Menu, then pick the category you want to see (categories are the same as the Operators). Press ENTER while viewing one category to see the next. Scoring is based on the overall number of right and wrong answers, with bonuses for setting high Range and low Wrong Allowed options, and for average times less than 17.5 seconds (1750 hundredth-seconds) per problem. When you finish a Test session, a screen appears with a display of the results. A "Basic Score" is shown, then any "Bonuses" that are added to arrive at the Final Score. There are three things that cause bonus points to be added to your score. The first is a time bonus. There is one bonus point for each 100th of a second your average time is less than 17.5 seconds per problem. For example, say you work 10 problems in a Test session, and take 15 seconds to do it. This would be an average time per problem of 1.5 seconds, or 150 hundredths of a second. This average would be 1600 hundredths of a second below 17.5 seconds, so the bonus would be 1600 points. The highest time bonus you can score (in theory) would be 1750 points, but you would have to average 0 seconds per problem to do it! I'm able to average about 1.6 seconds per problem at my fastest speed, which is about 1600 bonus points. The second thing you can get bonus points for is using a Range option setting of more than 1. You get the highest bonus points for setting the Range option to its maximum, 10. A Range setting of 10 would mean 1700 bonus points. A Range setting of 1 would mean no bonus points. This is appropriate, because if you set the Range to 1, you can see in advance what each question is going to be before you get to it, and you can go much faster if you have that little bit of extra time to think ahead. The last thing you can score bonus points for is using a "Wrong Allowed" option setting of less than the maximum, 15. If you set "Wrong Allowed" to 0, you can score a maximum bonus of 1700 points. This rewards those who attempt to work the problems under the pressure of knowing that the first time they miss a problem, the Test is going to abort. The optimum Basic Score is 5,000 points. You can only achieve this score if you work all 66 problems in Test mode, and get them all right the first time. If you work all 66 problems at an average speed of 1 second per problem, set the "Wrong Allowed" option to 0, and the "Range" option set to 10, you can score 5,000 bonus points. An optimum over-all score (5,000 Basic Score, plus 5,000 Bonus points) would be 10,000. I have not been able to quite reach this optimum because I can't work at a speed of 1 second per problem. I have come close, using the number keys on the top row of the keyboard to enter answers; someone who uses the number pad may be able to achieve a score of 10,000 or a little more. When you play in Test Mode, and score in the top 10 in a category, your name and score are saved and will be seen when viewing the High Scores in that category. The High Scores can't be changed (except by making a higher score in Test mode), but you can erase all the scores by deleting the file MATH.SCO. 12. Review Select Review from the main menu. Three choices appear on the Review menu: Work, Keep, and Read. If an operator sign (+, -, x, or %) appears next to the Work selection, there is a set of problems stored for review. These are usually items missed when you last used Practice or Test play. To review them, select "Work". To save a set of missed problems that was stored when you used Practice or Test play, select "Keep"; this saves the problems in the MATH.WRO file. To re-load the problems from that file, select "Read". 13. Help Select the Help item from the Main Menu to see a Help Menu containing a list of the main help topics available. Pick the item you want to see and press ENTER to display the help screen. You can also enter the help system from almost any point in the program by pressing F1. This gives "context-sensitive" help about the menu item or activity you're on when you ask for help. Once in the help system, you can move around to other help topics or view the list of all topics. Use F1 to see the list of topics. Use the TAB key to go to high-lighted cross-reference words and press ENTER on the word to go to the help topic named. Use Alt-F1 to back up to the previous topic. When you have displayed one of the Help screens, you can scroll up and down to see any portions that are off-screen. Use the cursor arrow keys, and the PgUp, PgDn, Home and End keys. Press ESCAPE to exit Help and return to the Main Menu. One item on the Help Menu, Guide, is different from the others. When you select Guide, Mighty Math looks for the file MATH.DOC in the same directory where the program file, MATH.EXE, is located. MATH.DOC is this Mighty Math manual in a disk file. If the manual file is found, it will be displayed on the screen, and you can browse through it with the cursor keys. To leave the manual screen and return to the menu, press ESCAPE or Ctrl-K-Q. While viewing the manual file with the Help/Guide feature, you can perform simple searches. Press ^QF to initiate a search, then enter the word or phrase to search for. You will be asked to enter one or more search option letters. The "U" option makes the search Un-case-sensitive (that is, treats Upper case the same as lower case). Other options are self-explanatory. 14. Quit Select Quit from the Main Menu and a short Quit menu appears with two choices: "Yes" and "No". Choose "Yes" to exit the program. "No" returns you to the opening screen, where you can either return to the program (by pressing ENTER) or quit (by pressing ESCAPE). You can also quit by pressing ESCAPE twice from the Main Menu; the first ESCAPE returns you to the opening screen, and the second terminates the program. 15. How Mighty Math Began The basic concept behind Mighty Math is one which I noticed when I tried to teach my own three boys the times tables. I'll never forget how they agonized for months over the 13 sets of tables their grade school teacher had given them -- and how little progress they seemed to make. They were dealing with a total of 169 problems -- from "0 x 0" to "12 x 12", consisting of 13 problems on the 13 tables from 0 to 12. It wasn't fun and it wasn't easy. That's when I developed the Mighty Math system. It wasn't a program yet, we didn't even own a computer. Mighty Math then was just a big chart on a poster, taped to the refrigerator door in our kitchen. But that chart was the same one you'll find in the Mighty Math program. And it made learning the times tables fun at last. The only bad part was that all that work didn't get used long -- the boys learned the tables in less then a week, and the chart was retired. Why does the Mighty Math chart work? I don't think there's only one reason; its a combination of several things, all of them important to kids trying to tackle this bane of childhood. But I believe the main reason is that the chart makes kids realize that there really aren't 169 problems in the times tables -- they're only about a third of that. And they can see all of them on the chart at one time. Mighty Math reduces the number of the problems from 169 to 66 by eliminating problems involving 0 and 1, and then discarding duplications. Almost two-thirds of the problems most children are forced to learn are unneccessary; the only purpose they serve is to wear the kids down and confuse them into thinking the task is more difficult than it is. It is not necessary to "learn" (i.e. memorize) 13 problems involving 0. Once you know that 0 times any other number is 0, you have no need to "memorize" any problems with 0 as one of the numbers. The same thing is true for 1: once you know that 1 times any number is that number, you don't have to memorize any 1 times tables. Eliminating 0 and 1 from the times tables leaves 132 problems. But when you look at those problems closely, you will soon see that 66 of them are nothing more than duplicates of the others. The problem "7 x 12" is exactly the same as "12 x 7". All you, as a kid learning the times tables, need to know is that the order of the "multiplier" and the "multiplicand" (or whatever they call the darn things these days) is totally irrelevant and immaterial. Once you know that, you can eliminate the 66 problems that are duplicates from the tables. This leaves you with 66 problems to memorize. You already feel 100% better. The chart shows this reduction in the problems at a glance -- you see on the chart all of the problems you have to learn, and they don't seem so difficult that way. Another good thing about the chart is it shows you that each time you learn another table, you have one less problem to learn on the next table. You learn "2 x 2" through "2 x 12" on the two times table, but you only have to learn "3 x 3" through "3 x 12" on the threes table. (The "3 x 2" problem was eliminated as a duplicate of "2 x 3".) By the time you get to the 12 times table, you only have ONE problem to learn: "12 x 12"! Another nice thing about the chart is that you can jump around to randomly select problems when you want, or you can stay near the top of the set if you want. That's what the Range option does. You can set the Range to 1 at the beginning, and work your way through the problems one by one until you get to unknown (un-memorized) territory; again, you see right where you stand with respect to all the problems on the board every step of the way. Mighty Math adds further advantages: hints at the right times, timing and scoring to introduce competition as an extra incentive to learning, and it saves the problems you missed and lets you review them later, whenever you wish. 16. About the Quick Study program I have written another program, similar in approach to Mighty Math, called Quick Study. When you order a registered copy of Mighty Math, you get a free disk with the other program. See part 17 below for more information. I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you about Quick Study. It goes hand in hand with Mighty Math in working on basic learning skills. Quick Study is a lot like Mighty Math. It has a similar chart with all problems shown at a glance. It operates on the same principles and achieves the same quick results. It is a serious program, designed to help the learning process by showing that the task is not so hard. I think you will find that, like Mighty Math, Quick Study not only makes learning fun, but achieves immediate and clear results too. Although it works on the same principles, Quick Study is much more comprehensive then Mighty Math. It lets you create your own groups of problems and stores them in disk files for future use. It keeps separate scores for each group of problems. Each "problem" you enter includes a "question", an "answer", and an optional line of text (called the "prompt"). You enter the problems in sets of 10; the sets can be combined in groups of up to 5 sets, making 50 maximum problems in a Group. The sets act like tables in Mighty Math. You store each Group in a separate disk file. When you choose a Group to work on, all the sets in the Group are loaded by the program. You can then choose a range of sets to work on, like you choose a range of tables in Mighty Math. You only have to enter the words in a Group one time; they're saved in a disk file and can be recalled at any time. When you work on a Group of words, you can set the Range as in Mighty Math, to present the words in order, or in a random fashion. Words you miss are stored for review. Many other features parallel those in Mighty Math. With Quick Study, you and/or your child can enter a set or a whole group of spelling words, and learn them quickly and easily, using the same proven system demonstrated in Mighty Math. And parents and teachers can be relived of much of the tedium of assisting the learners, because the words are all stored on the computer, and can be reviewed by the learner without anyone else's assistance. Quick Study isn't limited to memorizing spelling words, however. You can use it to learn any kind of information that can be grouped, and encapsulated in short questions and answers. Quick Study can help you learn: names, capitals, and postal abbreviations of the States, world countries and their capitals, historical facts and figures, foreign languages; it can help you increase your vocabulary in English, memorize the elements and their atomic numbers and symbols in Plysics, learn basic chemical formulas in Chemistry, and improve your memory in general. There is no limit to the possibilities, because you decide what you want to learn, you save the words and problems you want to use, and the number of Group files you use is limited only by the amount of disk space you want to devote to them. Sample Group files are provided on the Quick Study program disk, and you can create any number of your own. 17. How to register and order additional copies Just send $35.00 for each registered copy of Mighty Math you want to: Robert Homes Brief*Case P. O. Box 500 Gulfport, MS 39502 (601) 863-8888 Make sure to include your name, address, phone number, and preferred disk format (either 5," or 3+"). When you order, please send along your comments and suggestions; I want to keep supporting and improving this program, and I can do so only with your help. With each registered copy of Mighty Math you order, you'll receive a free disk of my other educational program, Quick Study, and a bound User's Guide with instructions for both programs. You'll also receive notices of future updates, a special discount on the price of upgrades, and free telephone support. And Registration removes the forced notice that appears when you enter and exit the unregistered version of the program. If you are with an institution that requires more record keeping than your cancelled check, you may find the file INVOICE.DOC useful. It contains a blank invoice form which you should be able to print out with any word processor, or with the DOS command "print invoice.doc". You may need to print a test run to make sure the top and left margins are right for your printer. Site licenses at reasonable rates are available for schools and other institutions. Call for more information.