How About Right works
Ten minutes a day of the maths of shopping, money and bills. What each screen is for, what it covers, and what to expect.
Setting it up, once
Two minutes, and a grown-up should do it. It asks for a first name — optional, only used to say hello, and it never leaves the phone. Then about ten questions on what things cost where you live: a bus fare, a litre of milk, a school notebook.
Those answers are not a quiz. They are what lets the app tell the difference between a price that is surprising and a price that is simply unfamiliar — and prices differ enough between towns that guessing them would make half the questions wrong.
You can skip any of it. Skipping the prices costs some of the "is that plausible?" questions and nothing else.
The whole day, before it starts
Every day is the same shape, and the shape is on the first screen so the
end is always in sight. Twelve questions, about ten minutes.
Words come first on purpose — the words a later question
will use get rehearsed a few minutes before it needs them.
Warm-up is two things already known, because opening with a
win matters more than it sounds. Today is the day’s one
new skill, four goes at it. From before is something from a
while back, brought round again so it sticks.
Something harder is not counted either way.
Underneath, the board fills one square per day practised. It counts days turned
up, not answers got right, and nothing on it can ever be taken away.
Before any question: how is today?
Three faces, and no wrong answer. Hard is the one that
matters — it shortens the day to six and drops to things already known.
It is not giving up; it is how the app is told to back off, and it is the
difference between a bad day costing one session and costing the habit.
The other two record how it felt and change nothing else, which is why the
screen says so rather than implying a reward for cheerfulness.
What a question is made of
The question is the last thing read and it ends in a question mark. Above
it, What do I do here? restates the task in plainer words and
gives away no maths. It is unlimited, it never fades, and it is never counted
against anyone.
I’m not sure is on every question and is never wrong. It
records the skill as unknown and moves on — a far kinder thing to press
than a guess, and much better information than one.
Break is top right and stops the day wherever it is. A
half-finished day still counts and still fills its square.
The dots across the top are how many questions are left. There is no timer
anywhere in the app and there is not going to be one.
The questions are about real things
Shelf labels, change from a note, a bank statement, a fuel receipt, a fare
board. Some of the pictures are photographs of real bills with the private
information painted out, because a crisp drawing of a receipt is the easy
version and a creased one is what people actually meet.
Prices are the ones where you live. A litre of petrol costs what it costs, and
the app is simply wrong if it says otherwise — that is worth telling me
about.
The end is unmistakable
The day finishes and says so, once. It names what was actually worked on:
the words met today, and each skill in the learner’s own words.
There is no score and no percentage anywhere, on purpose. A child who can be
given a number can be given a worse one tomorrow.
A minute a week, for you
At the foot of the first screen, never hidden behind anything. It exists to
make one pattern obvious: doing well today and having lost it by the
fortnight.
So two numbers sit side by side and are never averaged into one. The first is
how much is coming out right now. The second is how much is still there weeks
later, on material that has come round again. A single blended figure would
hide exactly the thing worth seeing.
Underneath, a sentence per skill in plain words, and one thing to try out in
the world this week — the shop is where all of this is supposed to end
up.
Settings, and what they change
- How long a day is. Six, twelve or fifteen questions. Every length keeps all the parts — a shorter day rehearses and retains and barely teaches, which is the right trade for someone with six in them, rather than a smaller version of the same thing.
- What is switched on. Eleven areas, each of which can be turned off. Switching one off removes it from tomorrow’s day; nothing already done is lost.
- The board and the reward. What fills the squares and what five full squares are worth. Chosen at setup, and yours to change.
- Export everything as a file, from inside the app, without asking anyone.
- Erase everything. Two taps, and the second one says what will happen rather than "are you sure". Uninstalling does the same.
What it covers
127 skills across eleven areas, built from 4,258 questions. Each skill is one sentence about something a person can do — reads the price off a shelf label, says whether a payment will go through on that balance, works out how long it takes to save up for something.
| Money words | 56 |
| Shopping and change | 13 |
| Does this make sense | 9 |
| What things cost | 8 |
| Bills and meters | 7 |
| Money and notes | 7 |
| Banking and cards | 6 |
| Getting about | 6 |
| Eating out | 5 |
| Planning ahead | 5 |
| Earning and payslips | 5 |
Skills are banded from level 1 to level 5, and the later ones wait until the ones underneath them hold. Nobody is shown a level number.
What to expect — and what not to
It is built for two problems. The first is that things do not stick: something solid on Tuesday is gone by the following month, and practising harder on Tuesday does not fix it. So everything comes back on a spacing schedule — after a day, three days, a week, a fortnight, five weeks — each time in a setting it has not been met in.
The second is that maths which works on paper does not arrive in the shop. Somebody can work out 100 minus 87 at a table and still not work out their change at a counter. So the questions are about real things, and the grown-up page suggests one thing to try in the world each week.
What a fortnight looks like. Ten minutes a day, a square a day on the board, and the first number on the grown-up page starting to mean something after about a week. The second number — whether it is still there later — needs longer than that by definition, because it is measuring exactly that.
What it is not. It is not a course and it does not follow a school syllabus. Nobody has certified it and it does not claim any outcome. It is daily practice at the maths of running a life, and the honest promise is that ten minutes a day is a habit somebody can actually keep — which is worth more than an hour on a Sunday that stops in March.