Finally, the Perfect App for People Who Hate Math

Impact

The news: An app called PhotoMath will solve all your (math) problems with the push of a button. 

Just open the app, snap a picture of the problem you're trying to solve and you'll get the result instantly. PhotoMath will even show its work so you can learn how to solve the equations for yourself. 

The details: A developer named MicroBlink created the app, which is available for free on iOS and Windows Phone, though it won't be on Android until early 2015.

PhotoMath is capable of solving arithmetic, linear equations, square roots and most importantly, fractions. 

There are a few caveats, though. PhotoMath can't solve hand-written problems and can only solve for X if the X in the equation is italicized. 

Despite such obvious educational uses, MicroBlink insists education is not their focus. 

"We are not an educational company," MicroBlink co-founder and CEO Damir Sabol told Tech Crunch. "We are promoting our machine vision technology with PhotoMath." Sabol said PhotoMath was just one of several apps the company developed to showcase their text recognition technology.

The takeaway: Even though PhotoMath's creators didn't necessarily create the app for educational reasons, it's impossible to deny the app could have a tremendous impact on classrooms across the country. 

And is that a bad thing? Schools across the world are becoming more open to the role tablets and smartphones are inevitably going to play in education. Perhaps PhotoMath can be a part of that.