Angle Pack 2 is supplied on both cassette and disc and is actually made up of three separate sections. The Angle Tutor program is by far the largest and most comprehensive of the three and as the answers and methods it uses are needed for the others it is logical to use this first. The program has comprehensive instructions and even a flow chart to explain Its operation. The aim is to teach the basic concepts of angles but unfortunately we are not told what the author regards these to be.

From the programs supplied I assume these to be angle estimation and recognition as by far the greatest amount of effort is put into these two areas. There are two teaching screens though one of which is your introduction to angles and comprises a circle in the centre and an angle, which you can vary at will, with a read out of its measurement and the resultant remainder. This is a good approach and has much to recommend it but from this we go immediately to Game One in which we must get as close to a specified angle as possible and score 100 points from 30 tries, there is no explanation of the scoring system at all, this seems a little long-winded to me but some might like it. Success takes us to Game Two where we must guess the angle shown and then calculate the angle of the remainder of the circle. Failure takes you to Teaching Screen Two which Is more basic than screen one and just shows the usual division of a circle e.g. 90 and 60 degrees. All told this is a good introduction but to me the games are not really encouraging the right parts of the concept as one is rarely asked to estimate angles in 'real life'.

The second part is Polygon Tutor and comprises one teaching screen and one game. The teaching screen allows you to display polygons of almost any number of sides (up to 1000, which is far too slow in my opinion anyway) and then see the number of triangles which are produced from the sides and that all the central angles add up to 360 degrees. It then asks about the addition of the angles in a triangle and the actual values in each of the polygons triangles. When you have had enough of this the game begins. This involves being shown a random polygon and asked to count the sides. triangles and the name of the shape in each case. This again is fairly good but wrong answers are penalised or. if in the counting, simply cause you to loop forever. The big failure of this part is the total lack of teaching about irregular polygons and some of the more exotic quadrilaterals, whilst not fatal in terms of its use in teaching, it does rather restrict it to only one part of the area.

The triangle tutor is similarly restricted in my view as it completely fails to use or teach the names of different type of triangle and concentrates solely on the internal angles and their calculation if you are given two of them. Overall this is a good but expensive introduction to the concept of Angles in their various forms but cannot be said to be comprehensive by any means.

Dave Reeder