Road Sign Math: The Dream Realized!
I’ve been casually watching for road signs with mathematical significance for over two decades. The first version of Road Sign Math in 2005 was run on a blog and then a wiki. Forty different people submitted 251 signs in the Web 1.0 era. I let the site go in 2016 when I purged a number of projects.
In 2021 the site came back with some spurring from Tammy actually. The new version embraced “keep it simple stupid” and was a simple micro.blog website. It has sat there for a while.
No version of Road Sign Math has ever hit the dream that I had for it even way back in 2005, two years before the iPhone was launched. I always had this dream that you would be able to “play” Road Sign Math on your phone. The very essence of Road Sign Math is mobile. Something you do out in the world! With the help of Claude, that dream is now becoming real!
Check out the new Road Sign Math! But that is just the read-only view on the web… The star of the show is the new iPhone app!
- Snap a sign from the passenger seat. The iPhone camera finds every number on the sign and boxes it, and you check what it read.
- Write the math on a keypad built for it. It has roots, powers and factorials, and says “It works!” the moment both sides match.
- Post it, and the app fills in the rest. It takes the place and day from the photo and suggests a name, and the sign shows up on a feed and a map.
- Find another way. Anyone can add their own math to any posted sign.
- Badges instead of points. They’re little road signs for your first sign, new states, every season and a few secrets, with no scores and no scoreboard.
- A page for every player. It shows their signs, their badges, a profile photo, and their finds on the map.
- roadsignmath.xyz is the window for everyone else. It has a map of every sign across the US and a page for each sign and player, with no app or sign-in needed.
Go ahead and join the beta TestFlight if you would like to play along as this gets built out!
You can read about this Road Sign Math reboot for all the details including build artifacts.
Driving + Math = Fun
