Explore this graph

Des-blog

Recent Posts

Introducing the Next Generation Desmos Geometry Tool (Beta)

Today, we’re releasing a brand new tool from Desmos Studio PBC. It’s the successor to our Geometry Tool, built on top of the computational engine of the Graphing Calculator. If you want to try it out, we’ll take no offense if you stop reading and head to www.desmos.com/geometry-beta. We’ve also embedded some interactive examples that you can play with below.

We’re excited about this tool for three reasons.

First, Geometry is such a beautiful and universal subject. It starts with simple tools – just lines and circles – which, in combination, can be used to construct incredibly intricate and complicated things. Across all of mathematics, and much of science, geometric interpretations help things “make sense.”

Second, by building on top of the math engine of our graphing calculator, this new Geometry Tool gives power well beyond what the previous tool could. You can compute, plot on a coordinate plane, use sliders and lists, and even leverage advanced features like custom colors and actions, all integrated into the constructive geometry world.

Finally, this tool is the first major release of Desmos Studio PBC, and perfectly encapsulates why we formed this entity.

Just under a year ago, we made a huge change to Desmos. We split in half, and the curriculum business and teacher.desmos.com were acquired by Amplify Education, a long-time partner and collaborator. We chose Amplify because we wanted to find a trusted and respected home that could help expand the curriculum to cover all of K-12 while reaching more and more classrooms. That curriculum is cruising, including recently getting a perfect score(!) from EdReports.

As Desmos Studio PBC, we want to focus all of our energy on refining our tools and expanding their capabilities. We want to keep pushing the boundary of what’s possible with accessibility in mathematics. And we want to build new tools to unleash everyone’s inner mathematician.

This new Geometry Tool is the result of countless hours of work across our entire team, and we’re really excited to share beta access with you. Let’s see how it works.

Read more

Our 3rd Annual Global Math Art Contest is Here!

Update as of February 15, 2023: The 2022 Art Contest Gallery is live! You can find it at www.desmos.com/art.

Huge congratulations to everyone who participated. We’re so inspired by the effort, artistry, and creativity we saw across all of the age brackets and from around the world. It was nearly impossible to pick just 80.

We’re looking forward to seeing you again next year!

Banner with the text Desmos Global Art Contest 2022

Last year we received more than 10,000 submissions from more than 100 countries for our 2nd annual Global Math Art Contest. Each year, we’ve been amazed by the creativity and artistry of people from around the world. The Art Contest has inspired new features, pushed our technical limits, and motivated us to improve our calculator to be worthy of the incredible people who use it.

a rocket ship orbiting the earth, the head of a fox made up of line segments, and a nautilus using lists.

We’re excited to announce our 3rd annual Global Math Art Contest, this year with some big changes.

Read more

Tags:

Introducing “Desmos Studio PBC” and “Desmos Classroom at Amplify”

We have some important news that we’re excited to share with all of you.

The Desmos you know is splitting into two entities: Desmos Studio, a Public Benefit Corporation that develops our free calculators, and Desmos Classroom, the creators of our curriculum and activity platform.

The curriculum part of Desmos is then joining forces with Amplify, an education company we’ve been proud to partner with for many years. The team developing everything at teacher.desmos.com (our free activities, the free Activity Builder, and Desmos Math 6-A1) will join Amplify as a division called Desmos Classroom.

For our community of teachers, learners, mathematicians, and creators, we are continuing to support all of our existing products, and everything that is free will remain free, now and always. Desmos Studio and Desmos Classroom will also remain tightly collaborative. We will continue doing the same work, committed to the same ideals, now with more resources to improve our products and serve more communities.

What does this mean for Desmos Classroom?

The Desmos Classroom + Amplify partnership will help us make Desmos Math 6-A1 available to more students and teachers. This means our shared vision of a creative and connected math education can become a reality for every student, rather than a select few, and that’s why we’re so incredibly excited about this work ahead.

Amplify and Desmos have been traveling on parallel paths for several years and we believe we can go farther together. We have both been creating math curricula based on the Illustrative Mathematics core curriculum. We have both been using core Desmos technology to do it. Both of our teams share the same unique understanding of the complexity of teaching, an appreciation for the brilliance of students, and a commitment to the inclusion of students who often feel pushed to the margins of math class.

Desmos has a proven model for helping students learn math and love learning math with technology. Amplify has a proven model for supporting students, teachers, schools, and districts at scale. We have decided we need each other’s strengths in order to help every student learn math and love learning math.

What does this mean for Desmos Studio?

By remaining independent, Desmos Studio will be able to focus all of its energy on building the most equitable, accessible, powerful, and delightful tools for exploring mathematics. Desmos Studio will continue to partner with the best publishers, platforms, and assessments around the world. The revenue from those partnerships will let us keep investing in our calculators and support our development of new tools.

Desmos Studio will reincorporate as a Public Benefit Corporation, formalizing our commitment to the people who use and rely on our tools, and formalizing our commitment to equity and accessibility as uncompromising values.

More than 75 million people use Desmos Studio tools today. The calculators are integrated into almost every state test and college entrance exam. Communities have sprung up on Reddit, Tiktok, and Discord, sharing ideas and exercising creativity beyond our wildest imagination. By forming Desmos Studio, we will be able to grow with and alongside this community for years to come.

What does this mean for you?

If you love tools like our graphing calculator, we have good news. The team at Desmos Studio is now 100% focused on their development, with lots of resources and a long list of your feature requests in front of them.

If you love Activity Builder and other free tools at teacher.desmos.com, we have good news. They will continue to be free, continue to power our curriculum, and continuously improve.

If you love our math curriculum, we have good news. Together with Amplify, we are continuing to sell and support it now and into the future. It will receive more attention and more resources than before, letting us develop learning supports we’ve always wanted to provide but couldn’t when we were operating independently. It’s a great time to get in touch with our team and learn more about our curriculum.

If you love people who work at Desmos, we have good news. We are all still working at either Desmos Classroom or Desmos Studio, all of us committed to the same mission that brought us to Desmos in the first place.

This is a new chapter in the Desmos story, and I hope you’ll keep turning pages with us. The action is just starting.

Note: this post was edited August 2023 for clarity and to reflect the new branding of Desmos Math 6-A1.