Plato's Playground

Teaches young children how to count in binary on their fingers.

High high can you count using the fingers on one hand? If you said "5", you're wrong; in fact, Plato's Playground will show you how to count to 31 and that's only the beginning.

Plato's Playground is an AI-backed implementation of a Math club the author, a Ph.D. mathematician, created for his younger daughter's elementary school over 18 years ago. The primary purpose of Plato's Playground was to introduce elementary school-age children to the beauty of Mathematics in a way that had never been done before.

Mathematical topics are often presented to young children based on the misguided belief that the first things that need to be presented are arithmetic tables: memorize the addition and multiplication tables because young kids are unable to grasp more advanced concepts without a firm knowledge of arithmetic. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth, as the success of the author's weekly Math club showed.

Plato's Playground consists of over twenty math "projects", many of which are based on math topics introduced at the undergraduate and graduate school level at the University of California, Berkeley, which the author attended. The Math club included basic concepts of Probability theory, Number systems, the Euler Characteristic, Minimal surfaces, non-orientable surfaces, Logic puzzles, Knot theory, Prime numbers, Fractals, Algebraic geometry and more. And yes, the children, all between the ages of 5 and 9, not only grasped these concepts easily but were thoroughly engaged the entire two hours the club met.

Here are some of benefits of Plato's Playground:

1. Communicate with the app verbally or in written form.

2. Over 50 languages are supported.

3. Supports natural language.

4. Extensive use of graphics and speech make the app suitable for children who are deaf or blind.

5. Fosters a life-long love of math through play and exploration.

For more information, see https://www.platosplayground.org