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Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

synthesis.com

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Re: Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

#2
I had the opportunity to work on this. I let my son try the demo last week. Hours afterward at dinner I asked him to explain binary to my wife.

"Mom, imagine you have the number 101 in binary. The first 1 is the fours spot, so you have 4. There's none in the twos spot. and 1 in the ones spot. So that means you have 5."

Two days later he came into my office and asked if he could do more tutor.

That's a huge win in my book!

Re: Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

#3
post #2

I had the opportunity to work on this. I let my son try the demo last week. Hours afterward at dinner I asked him to explain binary to my wife. "Mom, imagine you have the number 101 in binary. The first 1 is the fours spot, so you have 4. There's none in the twos spot. and 1 in the ones spot. So that means you have 5." Two days later he came into my office and asked if he could do more tutor. That's a huge win in my…

I’ve taught math at the college level for 25 years. The video looked impressive. Do you know up to what level of math it does?

Re: Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

#6
Just like that language self-study tool that was on the front page recently, an ML based math tutor is one of the things that are much easier to imagine and to hype than to actually make work well.

I just don't trust companies that try to give the impression that they've worked it out already - and this one seems even worse at that than the language thing.

Re: Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

#7
post #3
post #2

I had the opportunity to work on this. I let my son try the demo last week. Hours afterward at dinner I asked him to explain binary to my wife. "Mom, imagine you have the number 101 in binary. The first 1 is the fours spot, so you have 4. There's none in the twos spot. and 1 in the ones spot. So that means you have 5." Two days later he came into my office and asked if he could do more tutor. That's a huge win in my…

I’ve taught math at the college level for 25 years. The video looked impressive. Do you know up to what level of math it does?

Further down the page, they have a "Curriculum roadmap", which goes up to things like "College Algebra" and "Matrix Theory".

Re: Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

#10
I tried the demo.

As an educator who has taught math: this is frustrating junk. It moves at a crawl. It doesn't explain the reasoning for anything. It provides no motivation.

It's full of incorrect statements like "Computers struggle with too many digits."

Pretty much the worst practice if you want to teach someone anything.

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