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>Comfort levels with using ChatGPT for different types of assignments vary among students: 54% found that using it to research new topics, for example, was an a

>Comfort levels with using ChatGPT for different types of assignments vary among students: 54% found that using it to research new topics, for example, was an acceptable use of the tool. But only 18% said the same for using it to write an essay. Sounds reasonable.

ratg13 2y ago
I know I would have loved an AI to be able to ask calculus questions to when I was that age. A lot of the lectures in the class didn't make sense to me at the time, and spent crazy amounts of time trying to teach myself from books.
- epolanski 2y ago
  There's lots of positives in that. I feel too many people treat school as just a place you learn stuff, where in reality the most important part imho is the challenge of learning, that's what sticks. I have a degree in chemistry, I almost forgot everything about chemistry, but I have very huge advantages when it comes to learning complex topics compared to those that have the explanation handed to them. In Italy you could not fail a school year if you failed only 3 topics, so the little engineer in me figured out I could simply ignore the existence of mathematics and physics for 5 years and just do the rest. In university I had to go through calculus 1/2, complex analysis, quantum mechanics, etc, etc. So as soon as I got into calculus 1 the first semester of the first year I bought several books on the topics and just went page by page understanding and thinking about the definitions and did 100x the exercises of my class mates. By the end of it maths have never been a problem in my life. Whatever I need to learn I am now equipped with the tools to do so starting from the basics and this pays off in many aspects of my life.
- pseudocomposer 2y ago
  Not sure how old you are, but WolframAlpha has been exactly that for a solid decade and a half. (It was a little late for while I learned calculus, but I used it for reference afterwards.) Also, I’m curious - are GPTs/LLMs actually able to provide consistently accurate explanations and solutions for calculus? They’re historically notoriously bad at even basic arithmetic and algebra, and a quick search seems to confirm them performing similarly with calculus, but I’m open to being wrong and things having improved on that front if you have some evidence. Finally, echoing the other commenter, you really shouldn’t need a GPT-type tool to do math. If you do, you arguably don’t actually understand the concepts. And I’d honestly be shocked if a LLM could break things down well enough to genuinely help someone who doesn’t understand how to do a calculus problem, having myself tutored friends who didn’t understand things back when I was in school (and using LLMs extensively for my own work). Some of the best math classes I took didn’t grade homework at all, only exams for which we only had pencil and paper (or some weighted homework as 10% or less of the final grade). But of course, if you didn’t do all the homework, you’d never pass the exams.
- fragmede 2y ago
  Seriously. The example in the book goes A->C->F to get the answer and I needed the TA to explain how you get to C from A and then also the steps to get to F from C in order to understand better then merely filling in the numbers.

ratg13 2y ago

I know I would have loved an AI to be able to ask calculus questions to when I was that age. A lot of the lectures in the class didn't make sense to me at the time, and spent crazy amounts of time trying to teach myself from books.

epolanski 2y ago
There's lots of positives in that. I feel too many people treat school as just a place you learn stuff, where in reality the most important part imho is the challenge of learning, that's what sticks. I have a degree in chemistry, I almost forgot everything about chemistry, but I have very huge advantages when it comes to learning complex topics compared to those that have the explanation handed to them. In Italy you could not fail a school year if you failed only 3 topics, so the little engineer in me figured out I could simply ignore the existence of mathematics and physics for 5 years and just do the rest. In university I had to go through calculus 1/2, complex analysis, quantum mechanics, etc, etc. So as soon as I got into calculus 1 the first semester of the first year I bought several books on the topics and just went page by page understanding and thinking about the definitions and did 100x the exercises of my class mates. By the end of it maths have never been a problem in my life. Whatever I need to learn I am now equipped with the tools to do so starting from the basics and this pays off in many aspects of my life.
pseudocomposer 2y ago
Not sure how old you are, but WolframAlpha has been exactly that for a solid decade and a half. (It was a little late for while I learned calculus, but I used it for reference afterwards.) Also, I’m curious - are GPTs/LLMs actually able to provide consistently accurate explanations and solutions for calculus? They’re historically notoriously bad at even basic arithmetic and algebra, and a quick search seems to confirm them performing similarly with calculus, but I’m open to being wrong and things having improved on that front if you have some evidence. Finally, echoing the other commenter, you really shouldn’t need a GPT-type tool to do math. If you do, you arguably don’t actually understand the concepts. And I’d honestly be shocked if a LLM could break things down well enough to genuinely help someone who doesn’t understand how to do a calculus problem, having myself tutored friends who didn’t understand things back when I was in school (and using LLMs extensively for my own work). Some of the best math classes I took didn’t grade homework at all, only exams for which we only had pencil and paper (or some weighted homework as 10% or less of the final grade). But of course, if you didn’t do all the homework, you’d never pass the exams.
fragmede 2y ago
Seriously. The example in the book goes A->C->F to get the answer and I needed the TA to explain how you get to C from A and then also the steps to get to F from C in order to understand better then merely filling in the numbers.