Elizabeth Stapel: The primary developer of Purplemath and the author of its lessons is Elizabeth Stapel. Though she now has a master's degree in mathematics, she never would have believed while growing up that she would one day be a math teacher. In grammar school, her two worst subjects were math and phys-ed ("physical education"). For her high-school years, her parents sent her to a religious school where the prevailing philosophy seemed to be that women needed to be married, not educated. (Yes, those kinds of places still exist.) Upon graduation, her parents put her to work at their church and then at their religious business. After five years of barely paying her, her parents finally had no further use for her and allowed her to try college, so she enrolled at the local state school. One of her first classes covered early-high-school algebra.

Ms. Stapel quickly discovered that, though she often found math to be difficult, she had a taste for the subject. She started helping fellow students through the university tutoring service, later becoming a grader for the math department. While grading homework for many professors' classes, she observed common problems that students have and common mistakes that they make. When she tutored, she again encountered these areas of difficulty, and was able to learn which techniques generally helped the students to succeed. These techniques were often those that Ms. Stapel had used to conquer her own confusion when earlier taking these same classes herself.

As a graduate student, Ms. Stapel worked in various tutoring and teaching capacities, and learned to incorporate her success techniques into her instruction. These are the same tips and techniques that she weaves through her in-class instruction and the Purplemath lessons.

Her basic philosophy regarding algebra is "If I can do this stuff, then so can you!"

History of Purplemath: Purplemath began in 1998 as a personal web site created by Elizabeth Stapel. Ms. Stapel's initial site included course-specific materials for her math students. Later, she started adding a few lessons. As she created more lessons, traffic at her personal site increased.

Eventually, she decided to do a complete site redesign to create a more professional appearance and to highlight the list of lessons. In order to pick a color theme, she asked her son, then about two and a half years old, which color he liked best. Naturally, he picked purple.

Traffic continued to increase, and in 1999 the site had to be moved from its free hosting to its own domain name. When Ms. Stapel struggled to find a name, her husband suggested "Purplemath", and the the name was duly registered. A few years later, "Purplemaths" (with an "s" at the end) was added for the benefit of British-English speakers.

Purplemath served 2.4 million content-pageviews in October of 2007. Currently, Purplemath uses about 82 gigs of bandwidth a month, serving around 75,000 lesson-pageviews each day to about twenty-eight thousand daily visitors.

Recognition: Thousands of sites are now linked to Purplemath, and thousands of visitors come to the site each day. Purplemath has been listed as an online resource in such books as Cliffs Quick Review: Algebra II. In addition, the following awards and notations have been made:

• Included in Homeschool.com's "Top 100" Web sites list, January 2008
• Featured "Web Byte" in the NCTM news bulletin, September 2006
• Included in the listing of "Net Goodies" in the NADE "Math SPIN News" journal, January 2006
• Included in T.H.E. Journal's listing of General Math Resources, July 2005
• Listed as a TechLearning "Site of the Day", February 2005
• Featured in the Webwatch column in "The Telegraph" newspaper of Calcutta, India, 16 February 2005
• Added to EEVL's Mathematics listings, February 2005
• Added to Homeschool.com's "Top 100" Web Sites list, September 2004
• Rated by Education World as an "A+" site, October 2003
• Added to the Internet Scout Report's archive of educational resources, June 2003
• Included in the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse's Digital Dozen, April 2003
• Added to Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators, April 2003
• Listed as a Links2Learning "Premier Page", April 2002.
• Selected as an Education Planet "Top Math Site", February 2002.
• Listed as a PBS "Recommended Site", January 2002.
• Mentioned in Wall Street Journal article, November 2001.
• Chosen as a Learning in Motion "Top Ten Selection", October 2001.
• Listed as an Internet Web Guide Magazine "Molecule of the Month" site, May 2001.
• Placed on the "Top20" list for algebra, September 2000.
• Listed as the Math Goodies newsletter "Site of the Month", August 2000.
• Received the "Web Site Excellence Award" from The School Page, March 2000.

Purplemath is frequently referenced by About.com, GoogleAnswers, and Wikipedia.

Software used in development: Many have inquired about the software used to create the various graphics on Purplemath. Graphs usually begin their life in the Equation Grapher program, produced by MFSoft International. Screen-captures are taken from graphing calculators using the Texas Instruments' TI Connect software. Other graphics are created, and graphs are "tweaked", inside Paint Shop Pro, produced by the Corel Corporation. The animations are also created in Paint Shop Pro, through the Animation Shop plug-in. Mathematical typesetting is done with MathType, produced by Design Science.

Page formatting is done within Namo's WebEditor.

Contact: Ms. Stapel may be contacted through the contact form or through regular mail at "Elizabeth Stapel, POB 1184, Palatine IL 60078-1184, USA".

  Copyright © 2006-2008  Elizabeth Stapel   |   About   |   Terms of Use

 Feedback   |   Error?