About Purplemath

History of Purplemath: Purplemath began in 1998 as a personal web site created by Elizabeth Stapel. Ms. Stapel's initial site included course-specific materials for her math students in various classes at various schools. Later, she started adding a few lessons, so students who missed a class would be able to catch up on whatever "this always confuses everybody the first time" topic had arisen. As she created more lessons, traffic at her personal site increased.

Eventually, she decided to do a complete site redesign to create a more professional appearance and to highlight the list of lessons. In order to pick a color theme, she asked her son, then about two and a half years old, which color he liked best. Naturally, he picked purple.

Traffic continued to increase, and in 1999 the site had to be moved from its free hosting to its own domain name, "purplemath". A few years after, "purplemaths" (with an "s" at the end) was added for the benefit of British-English speakers; "purplemath.org" followed later.

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Recognition: Thousands of sites are now linked to Purplemath, and hundreds of thousands of visitors come to the site each day. Purplemath has been listed as an online resource in such books as Cliffs Quick Review: Algebra II, has been used to supplement much online instruction, and has been used as a reference by such luminaries as Cosmos magazine. In addition, the following awards and notations have been made:

• Listed as a recommended resource by the Library of Congress
• Chosen as one of HowToLearn.com's top three "Best Educational Websites for Algebra"
• Awarded third place in She Knows national poll
• Referenced in The New York Times
• Added to Schoolzone's webguide of recommended sites
• Included in Homeschool.com's "Top 100" Web sites list
• Featured "Web Byte" in the NCTM news bulletin
• Included in the listing of "Net Goodies" in the NADE "Math SPIN News" journal
• Included in T.H.E. Journal's listing of General Math Resources
• Listed as a TechLearning "Site of the Day"
• Featured in the Webwatch column "The Telegraph" newspaper of Calcutta, India
• Added to EEVL's Mathematics listings
• Rated by Education World as an "A+" site
• Added to the Internet Scout Report's archive of educational resources
• Included in the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse's Digital Dozen
• Added to Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators
• Listed as a Links2Learning "Premier Page"
• Selected as an Education Planet "Top Math Site"
• Listed as a PBS "Recommended Site"
• Mentioned in the Wall Street Journal
• Chosen as a Learning in Motion "Top Ten Selection"
• Listed as an Internet Web Guide Magazine "Molecule of the Month" site
• Placed on the "Top20" list for algebra
• Listed as the Math Goodies newsletter "Site of the Month"
• Received the "Web Site Excellence Award" from The School Page

Purplemath has affiliated itself with a few proven service providers, including MathHelp.com (for video tutoring and responsive quizzing), WyzAnt.com (for pre-screened tutors available in your own area), and Mathway.com (for software that helps explains the specific steps in your specific exercises, and whose "widgets" populate many of Purplemath's pages).

Purplemath is frequently referenced by About.com, GoogleAnswers, YahooAnswers, and Wikipedia; and many have written to thank Purplemath for the help it provides.

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Software used in development: Many have inquired about the software used to create the various graphics on Purplemath. Graphs of equations usually begin their life in the Equation Grapher program, produced by Markus Friberg. Screen-captures are taken from Texas Instruments' graphing calculators using TI's software. Other pictures are created, and graphs are "tweaked", inside Paint Shop Pro, now owned by the Corel Corporation. The animations are also created in Paint Shop Pro, through Jasc's Animation Shop plug-in. Mathematical typesetting within graphics is done with MathType, produced by Design Science; stand-alone formatted mathematics is created through KaTeΧ, an online formatting tool produced by Khan Academy.

Page formatting is done within Adobe's Dreamweaver. The domain names (purplemath.com, purplemaths.com, purplemath.org, etc) are registered through GoDaddy. The site's hosting is through Liquid Web. Security (which protects you from, for instance, drive-by computer infections) is provided by Sucuri.

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Juul Labs: On 24 April 2020, Purplemath, Inc., learned that Juul Labs had hoped to use Purplemath to peddle its wares to children. Juul failed in its desires, and was taken to court by many of its targets. Testimony provided by Elizabeth Stapel proved helpful to the Federal court hearing the consolidated case in understanding the issues involved. Ms. Stapel was delighted later to hear of the positive ruling by the court.

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Contact: Ms. Stapel may be contacted through the contact form, or via "snail-mail" at "Elizabeth Stapel, POB 493, Addison IL 60101-3729, USA"

Privacy Policy Page

Purplemath has no affiliation with one "Joshua Schneider" (AKA "Josh Metnick", a promoter of claimed "reliable" crypto-currency who seems to have some difficulty in complying with contracts and paying his bills), "AIS, Inc" (AKA "Chicago.com", AKA "Chicago Community Trust), "John F Stapel" (AKA "Doctor" John Stapel, apparently an "engineer", a property manager, and/or a wedding planner), or their various confederates.

Contrary to their claims, they have never had any ownership interest in Purplemath, they never authored a single line in any lesson of Purplemath nor had any part in any aspect of its design, they have never been affiliates of Purplemath, and they were never employed by nor held any position with Purplemath. The details of their claims to the contrary were obtained from public documents rather than from first-hand knowledge.

They have never received authorization to attempt to sell Purplemath, to collect advertising fees for Purplemath, nor to speak on behalf of Purplemath in any manner whatsoever. Their representations to the contrary (identity theft, phishing, etc) have been made without the prior knowledge of, let alone the permission of, Purplemath, Incorporated, nor Elizabeth Stapel. It remains unknown what part they may have played in shilling Purplemath to Juul Labs.

Apologies for the ongoing confusion.