It adds up: Teen conquers math with app
Most kids who are struggling in math might study harder or find a tutor. Some give up.
Amit Kalra had a different idea — he decided to make an app. But first he had to teach himself how to code.
“I would Google everything I needed,” said Kalra, 16, of Union City. “I learned the basics of it, and I just started to mess around with it.”
The result: an app that Kalra dubbed 6284 Calc. First it helped him pass geometry. Now it’s gotten him a coveted ticket and scholarship to Apple’s World-
wide Developers Conference in San Francisco next week.
“It’s really exciting!” Kalra said.
It didn’t start out that way. Instead Kalra’s app — the first four digits of which spell “math” on a telephone keypad — was born out of boredom, frustration and anxiety.
Kalra took Algebra I as an eighth-grader. But when his parents enrolled him in a charter school as a freshman, the school placed him in Algebra again. After Kalra begged his parents to let him transfer to James Logan High School, they agreed. But since he hadn’t taken geometry in his first semester, he was far behind his classmates.
Kalra struggled to catch up, but there were just too many formulas to remember.
“I was completely lost,” he said.
After several weeks, Kalra got an inspiration. He saw that a friend had created an app to help him do his calculus homework. Kalra decided he would create his own app for geometry, one that would know all the formulas he needed so he wouldn’t have to remember them.
There was just one problem: Unlike his friend, Kalra didn’t know the first thing about coding. He’d never taken a programming course and had never even shown much interest in it. Sure, he’d played Roblox, a Minecraft-like building game on the computer, but most of his interests were away from the computer, doing things like playing basketball, taking pictures or going hiking.
His best friends weren’t into programming, and his parents aren’t technologically minded.
His dad, who owns his own Indian goods wholesaling business, doesn’t use a computer at all, according to Kalra’s mom, Poonam Kalra. His mom, who worked at the cosmetics counter of a department store before deciding to stay at home with her kids, only uses one to shop or make hotel reservations.
“I have no idea how he got into the programming,” she said.
But Amit Kalra, it turns out, is creative, determined and self-motivated. Once he decided to make a math app, he stuck with it and never looked back.
Using Google, he found various online resources, including Apple’s guide to its Swift programming language, which he downloaded to iBooks on his iPhone.
“He’s someone who is really open to ideas, and I think that’s what sets him apart,” said Johnny Lam, who taught Kalra Algebra II this past school year at Logan.
Kalra first built a simple text-based app for his computer. He could enter various values, and the app would calculate the answer, using the mathematical formulas Kalra built into it. With no more formulas to memorize, geometry suddenly became easy.
After some encouragement from friends, Kalra decided to turn his program into an iPhone app. He worked on it all summer last year. Wanting the app to be useful for more than just geometry, he added on to it, relearning algebra equations so he could plug them in also.
By September, the app was nearly ready and Kalra was already acting the part of a seasoned programmer. First he convinced his friends to beta test the app. He quickly fixed the bugs they found. Then he persuaded his parents to pay $99 so he could get into Apple’s developer program and publish 6284 Calc in the App Store. On Sept. 21, it went live.
Like many another Silicon Valley coders, Kalra didn’t stop there. He’s kept adding on to the app, tweaking it daily.
“Every free time he has, he spends working on his app,” said Neiyo Nakachi, 16, one of Kalra’s best friends and a classmate at Logan.
For the last several years, Apple has awarded annual scholarships to students and aspiring programmers to attend its developer conference. Kalra was too late to apply last year, but was determined to go for it this year. He ended up getting one of just 350 scholarships that Apple awarded. Until he won it, his mom wasn’t sure she was going to renew his membership in Apple’s developer program.
“You worry about it,” said his mom. “Is the kid just throwing money in the water or is he really learning something?”
But his mom’s impressed now, and so are his math teacher and his friends. As for Kalra, the app has opened up his eyes to the world of programming, something he’d never considered before his own struggles with math. He plans to stick with it for a while.
“Maybe this summer I’ll work on a side project like a game or something,” he said. “Just for fun.”
“He’s someone who is really open to ideas, and I think that’s what sets him apart.” — Johnny Lam, who taught Kalra Algebra II this past school year at Logan