Product Description

One of the best ways to sharpen your basic maths skills is through repetition, and Professor Kageyama's Maths Training: The Hundred Cell Calculation Method gives you the opportunity to do maths exercises in a new, fun way! Renowned Japanese Professor Hideo Kageyama designed the Hundred Cell method to improve children's school performances. In his method, Professor Kageyama takes a 10-by-10 cell grid and places a single-digit number in front of each row and column. A person filling in the grid solves each cell by calculating the numbers listed at the start of the row and column. The key to the Hundred Cell method is to fill in each cell as fast as possible. The calculation itself may be simple, but the challenge comes in finishing faster each time you fill in a grid. It's this repetition that sharpens your maths skills! Like other mental fitness software in the Touch! Generations series, Professor Kageyama's Maths Training sports a daily training mode with recommended exercises. After training for five days, your level increases and along with it the difficulty level. In addition to the Hundred Cell calculations and daily training, Professor Kageyama's Maths Training features 40 additional exercises based on simple maths skills. After finishing an exercise, you're awarded a medal based on your performance. With the Hundred Cell method, you can refresh your basic maths skills for school or everyday life!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #489 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Nintendo
• Released on: 2008-02-08
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Platform: Nintendo DS
• Subtitled in: English
• Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, .22 pounds

Manufacturer's Description

Improve your calculus with DS!

The foundation of Dr Kageyama's Maths Training is 100 square calculations a method conceived by Kageyama Hidea, a Japanese elementary school principal. The DS is held side ways like a book and all answers are written using the stylus.

The key principal of the software is repetition which according to Kageyama stimulates the brain. The main exercise 100 cells maths, consists of 100 hundred simple maths problems combined into a 10 by 10 grid using the numbers at the top and side of the grid. There are however many other exercises, ranging from simple one digit math problems to slightly more complex three digit challenges.

Customer Reviews

Good but some entry error issues
The Good: This has some really good maths testing and training facilities with just about the right level of difficulty. Ideal for someone who just likes testing themselves or for someone that needs to improve their maths skills.

The Bad: This requires the answers to be handwrittend with the stylus. For some users this will mean you write the correct answer but the program will see it as a different number. I have a massive problem with 9 which gets read as a 0 or a 2 and quite often 8 gets mistaken for a 2 or a 6. This can be really infuriating. A better implimentation would have been to have a touchpad imput for the right answer rather than a written one.
If you have bad handwriting go for Big Brain Academy instead.

Professor Kageyama's Maths Training (Nintendo DS)
Overall this game provides very useful practice for times tables, multiplication, subtraction, division & addition - and seems to be particularly appealing to children who are addicted to their DS :-)

The daily test is short enough (c. 5 minutes)to make it 'fun' for primary school children & so can be done before going to school - eg over breakfast?. It was used daily in our house during the recent school half term - with no prompting from me!

Agree with earlier posting about the fact that their writing is not always recognised - my bete noir is the number 4! I guess practice makes perfect.....

Would prefer for the game to include progression charts (so child/children can see over time how they have improved ) and include name of person who holds the time record for each event a la Brain Training game - for those with a competitive streak.

Minor gripe: colours of medals should be a bit more distinct, colourwise (bronze and gold are very similar)

Great for kids - patronising for adults
This game is strongly based on the Kumagai method which originated in Japan - with lots of repitition in the basics, leading to graduation through the levels. As such, it is great for primary School children, helping them to revise and develop their basic numerical skiils. However, i have some gripes.

1. The 'professor' is extremely patronising in his attitude - which would put a large number of children off

2. You have to start at a very basic level and repeat some very simple exercises for 5 days before being allowed to progress. it would be far better if it could start you off with a simple assessment to judge what level it introduced you at - i nearly threw the whole thing away after 3 days of baby flashcards!

3. Because you have to write in the digits manually, they are often misinterpreted - whcih slows you down considerably. I find my '3's and '2's are constantly being interpreted as '1's! Incredibly frustrating!

Basically, this is nowhere near as good as the Brain training games and is not really worth the money.