If you’re into math education and are frustrated with the lack of math software being migrated to Mac OS X, you may want to check out the Instant Interactive Drills from the company of the same name.
Instant Interactive Drills provides a graphically rich environment to learn basic math facts: addition; subtraction; multiplication; and division, Ricky Sharp, founder and president of Instant Interactive told MacCentral.
Users can choose from one seven types of drills: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, mixed addition and subtraction, mixed multiplication and division, and just plain old mixed (addition, Subtraction, multiplication, and division). As problems are answered, indicator bars are filled, keeping track of correct and incorrect answers. If not all problems were answered correctly, users have a chance to go back and correct them.
When correcting missed problems, the original answer given is provided for reference. When high scores are earned, users can enter their names, which will be recorded next to their times and speeds. The seven different types of drills each have their own top ten scores list. Accuracy is rewarded as well as speed. Gold stars will be placed next to those names where all problems in a drill were answered correctly the first time.
You can use the Settings Screen to change how drill problems are generated and presented. Speech can be used to enable features such as being able to hear problems read to you and answer the problems using speech. (Speech features are only available in Mac OS 8.6 and 9.x when PlainTalk and/or Speech Recognition are present. Support for speech in Mac OS X will be available in a future version.)
An on-screen keypad can be enabled for those environments when using a keyboard is not possible (e.g. a touch-screen kiosk).
The US$19.95 application requires a Power Mac running Mac OS X or Mac OS 8.6-9.x (with the CarbonLib extension installed), 16MB of available RAM, 8MB of available hard disk space, a color monitor with thousands of colors (16-bit) or greater video card and QuickTime 3.0 or later. An Internet connection is recommended. For more info on Instant Interactive Drills, go to the product Web site. A demo version is available for download.