About

Why it exists

Hi, I’m Josh. I built BookPractice because practice problems are how I learn best. In organic chemistry, working problem after problem and checking each one against the answer taught me more than anything else did. I wanted more problems than I could find, so I built a little site for them and shared it with my classmates. They used it, and they told me it helped.

So I opened it up to everyone. Open textbooks are used in classrooms all over the country, and together they print tens of thousands of problems with their answers, but there was no simple, free way to practice them. Now there is: BookPractice has 61 books and more than 50,000 problems.

A big thank you to Benjamin Gelb for his help with some of the technical aspects of the project.

How it works

Every problem and answer comes straight from its textbook, credited to the book’s authors and used under the book’s own licence. Find your book, choose what you want to practice, and work each problem on paper. For most problems you then check your work against the book’s answer and mark yourself right or wrong; multiple-choice and matching problems are marked for you as you answer. Anything you miss comes back the next day; anything you get right comes back a little later each time, following the Leitner system.

The books you practice from are listed under Your books, on the home page and in the top bar. To take one off the list, open the book and press “Reset this book’s progress”, below its chapters. That clears everything you’ve answered in it, on every device you’re signed in on.

Free, always

I care a lot about open educational resources. Textbooks that anyone can read, share and build on make learning cheaper and fairer, and the people who write them deserve to see them put to good use. BookPractice will always be free, with no ads, ever.

Spot a mistake?

The problems were pulled from the books automatically, so every now and then something comes through wrong: a missing figure, an answer paired with the wrong problem, or a typo the book doesn’t have. If a problem doesn’t match its book, press Report problem on it. I read every report.

Get in touch

Have a question, an idea, or a book you’d like to see here? I’d love to hear from you.

Whose books these are, and on what terms, is on the Legal page.