Quick Math wins Rep. Eric Burlison’s 2024 Congressional App Challenge in Missouri’s Seventh District

When asked what inspired the creation of Quick Math, the student said, “I have always loved math. However, I have noticed my school friends and I don’t have very good mental math skills. It is a skill very important and essential for classes, standardized tests, and even real life situations. Whenever I am bored, I have this exercise where I would come up with random equations with two numbers and try to calculate it in my head, but the equations aren’t truly random if I’m the one thinking of them. And also it is just not the best way to practice mental math. So I thought, ‘what if I wrote a simple program to randomly generate equations in my computer’s terminal?’ But a program that is run in the terminal isn’t very accessible when I’m at school or without my personal computer. So I started looking at how to create and host a website. Just like that, I started making this project that is always available on the web, I can access it on my phone or a laptop wherever I go. Through this,  I was able to practice my mental math skills a lot and be less reliant on technology. Technology is now all around us and is available everywhere, but always relying on these technologies demolishes critical thinking skills. I have noticed from my friends and my experiences that when you practice a lot of mental math, your brain comes up with new and creative ways to approach the problems. The ability to think creatively, in my opinion, is very important in life.”