TransMATH is a computer-based mathematics A-level maths tutor.

You can work at YOUR pace in YOUR time concentrating on the topics YOU need.

This guide is designed to help you get the most out of TransMATH by supplying you with all the information you need to get started. It's easy! If you can click a mouse-button you can use TransMATH.

Have fun!

If you would like to know how to access it at Leeds University go to TransMath Access.

Written by Amanda Kelly, Simon Maunder, Sui Cheng, Jon Pitchford and Joanna Brown

Copyright: The University of Leeds, 1995-2000

The library is the first screen you meet when you launch TransMATH. There are three sections to the screen in which clicking will produce a response:

If you wish to practise answering questions without reading through the theory you should go to the Exercise Bank. If you wish to attempt several different exercises, you should go to the Library and click on the Revision section. From here choose Exercise Bank and click on Go to Topic. You will see a list of topics. Click on the area you wish to revise. A list of modules will appear. Again click on the module required. Finally a list of exercises within that module will appear. Choose the exercise required and TransMATH will take you straight into the exercise and generate the first question. When you quit the exercise, TransMATH will return you to the Exercise Bank ready to access another exercise. If you only wish to access one particular exercise you can do this from within a module by clicking on the exercise icon (see under Icons).

A module contains explanation, animation, examples and interactive exercises on a given mathematical subject. You can think of it as a kind of book with black pages, yellow text, a column of icons down the left-hand side and Next Page and Previous Page buttons in the lower right-hand corner. The title of the module appears at the top of each page (e.g. Introduction to Differentiation). To the right of the title is a box containing the current page number and the total number of pages in the module (e.g. 1 of 18). Each module contains several sections. Section headings are shown in blue below the main title (e.g. Introduction), together with the current section-page number and total number of pages in the section (e.g. 1 of 2).

There are plenty of exercises within TransMATH to keep you busy. You start an exercise by clicking on a red exercise book with the exercise name and number on the front. The exercises which require a single digit answer are quite often accompanied by a small entry box alongside which are up and down arrow keys. Use these keys to increase and decrease the number inside the box, then click on Enter to have your answer assessed. More complicated exercises will have larger keypad entering facilities. These have been designed to work like a programmable calculator with similar buttons and layout. You should enter your answer in the order that you would write it down, from left to right, using brackets when you are not sure of the order of operations.

Within most exercises, help is available if you enter a wrong answer. If you choose this help option, the question will be broken down into smaller steps and you can go through one step at a time in order to find out where you made your mistake.

In the exercises where the calculator keypad fills the screen, you can pause a question and return to the module text to look something up. You do this by clicking on the title at the top of the page or the pause icon on the right-hand side. To resume the exercise, simply click on the exercise icon in the left-hand column, or click on the red exercise book where you began the exercise.

TransMATH has a layer structure rather like the branches of a tree. At the top level (the Library) you choose a mathematical subject area. At the next level (the Topic Menu) you choose a module. To progress through a module, you click on the Next Page/Previous Page buttons at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. On some module pages information may be hidden away and will only be revealed if you click on the buttons and coloured text (usually red or blue) indicated. Occasionally you may come across hidden sub-sections with arrow keys to navigate between sub-section pages. There will usually be a small box to indicate how many pages there are in the sub-section and which of these pages you are on (e.g. 2 of 4).

Some information can be accessed from more than one module (e.g. text on the sine function can be accessed from the Introduction to Trigonometry module and from the Basic Functions module). When this is the case, the background changes to a tan colour and the main module can be rejoined by clicking on the Return button. To move from one module to another, click onto the module title at the top of a page and select a different module from the drop-down list which appears.

Within the text some words may be highlighted by a different colour or by being underlined. If the cursor changes shape as it moves over these words (called hotwords) then clicking on it will reveal further information about the word. Common colours to look out for are red and pale blue. You may also notice that the cursor changes shape as it passes over certain objects on the screen. Click on these hot-objects to reveal more information.

Motion is used throughout TransMATH to illustrate different mathematical techniques. Once an animation is underway the cursor changes to an hourglass shape indicating that you should wait until it is finished before continuing. When the animation starts, a control bar may appear which will allow you to pause or alter the speed at which things are moving. The animation icon in the left-hand column will remove and show this control bar.