Why a map, and who drew it.
School maths is one long chain of ideas, each one standing on the ones before it. CartoMath draws the chain as a map — 189 nodes across 14 courses, kindergarten to AP Calculus BC — so that a child, and the parent beside them, can see where they are, what comes next, and what a gap actually is.
Who
The site is made and run by one person under the name CartoMath, not by a company. There is no team, no investors and no sales desk; every email to hello@cartomath.com is read and answered by the person who wrote the pages. The privacy page and the terms are written in the same voice, on purpose.
Found a math or grading error? Report an error to the operator. Include the node, item number, what you entered and the expected result. Please leave out children's names and other personal information.
Why a map
It began with the accelerated pathway: Dimensions Math 4 to 7, then NC Math 1 in eighth grade, then the high school years to AP Calculus BC. A child on that path moves fast, and the one thing that goes wrong is quiet: an idea from two years back that was never quite solid, and that everything since has been leaning on. A grade does not show it. A map does — the node is empty, and the lines out of it go everywhere.
So every idea is a node, every prerequisite is a line, and a node fills in as it is mastered. Then the questions a family actually asks have a picture for an answer. Where are we? The last filled node. What is next? The nodes whose lines in are all filled. Why is this hard? Follow the lines back to the first empty one.
The map was then drawn back to kindergarten and across to the standard grades, because a gap can be anywhere, and because the younger sibling was asking.
How a node works
Each node is one idea, and each one has the same four things on it: a study sheet that says what the idea means and where it is used; three worked examples in plain English; a page of practice with hints that arrive one at a time and a full solution at the end; and, for the child who is ready, a harder climb. Every node on the map, kindergarten to AP Calculus BC, has its study sheet, worked examples and practice written.
Beside every question there is a board to work it out on by hand, with a pen, a finger or the mouse, and it has its own page too. Any sheet prints as a proper sheet of paper. Results are kept on the device first, so a page that was open keeps working on a train, and are synced to the account when it is back.
Children under thirteen never get an account of their own. A parent makes one account and adds each child as a profile; the map is per child, and switching between them is one tap.
What it costs
Free, with no card: the whole map, kindergarten to AP Calculus BC, and 28 nodes open all the way (the first two of every course), study sheet and practice, for one child on this device. The family plan opens every node, for up to six children on one account, with progress saved to it and followed to every device, and the timed papers and the climb. The two plans side by side.
No ads, no tracking, and nothing is sold to anybody. The site is new; there are no testimonials here because there is nobody to quote yet, and there will not be any invented ones.