Vedic maths skill for Alexa

Vedic Maths for kids, to teach quick tricks

Inspiration

India has been home to age-old mathematics tricks, which teach mental mathematics Through this skill we wanted to create an interactive learning experience for kids, which leverages the Vedic Maths tricks to teach kids how to solve problems in lightning fast speed.

What it does

The skill was built to educate kids on easy multiplication of base 10 (10-19 number) numbers. We plan on extending this to larger number base. The skill narrates and explains the steps of the trick, waiting for confirmation from user at each step to ensure understandability.

What we did

We used Alexa skills kit for the interaction model, and the backend was hosted in AWS Lambda in Python. Alexa was trained to work around dynamic numbers, and follow the Level 1 Vedic Maths multiplication process (that is for base 10 numbers 10-19). The function will execute the Level 1 multiplication steps, while explaining the same to users.

Challenges we ran into

Handling the same intent for multiple scenarios. For e.g. At every step, Alexa interacts with user to confirm their understanding. For every user response, Alexa needed to map it back to the proper question context, for the same user intent. To address the challenge, we did session management for handling the context.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

When we were able to make Alexa calculations dynamic, and render it user context awareness

What we learned

Awareness about the Compliance standards for skill certification was a big learning. It helped in understanding the benchmarks for creating a quality Alexa skill.

What's next for Vedic maths skill for Alexa

Current skill is limited to multiplication of base 10 numbers only. In the way ahead, we can extend this to larger number base, and also enable practice exercises into it.