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Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

synthesis.com

31–40 of 69 posts

Re: Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

#31
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?

We plan on having math through age 10 by the end of the year

Re: Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

#32
This is madness. I'm trying the demo and it is completely incomprehensible to me. This would have been incredibly frustrating to me as a child -- I would want them to stop speaking in metaphors and tell me what the fuck they were trying to teach me. Since then I have acquired a scientific PhD and taught myself undergrad computer science and math, and I do not understand this lesson.

Re: Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

#33
post #11

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.

In third grade parlance it is correct to say computers struggle with too many digits.

Not sure what "struggle" or "too many" is supposed to mean, but my laptop (running Python in a Linux VM) handles million-digit numbers just fine

    >>> a=10**(1000000)
    >>> b=a//3
    >>> len(str(b))
    1000000
Given that computers have calculated the value of Pi to more than 60 million digits , I think we can safely say that computers readily handle numbers with many digits.

Re: Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

#35

This is madness. I'm trying the demo and it is completely incomprehensible to me. This would have been incredibly frustrating to me as a child -- I would want them to stop speaking in metaphors and tell me what the fuck they were trying to teach me. Since then I have acquired a scientific PhD and taught myself undergrad computer science and math, and I do not understand this lesson.

Weird because my 8yo understood it and loved it

Re: Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

#37
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In third grade parlance it is correct to say computers struggle with too many digits.

Not sure what "struggle" or "too many" is supposed to mean, but my laptop (running Python in a Linux VM) handles million-digit numbers just fine >>> a=10**(1000000) >>> b=a//3 >>> len(str(b)) 1000000 Given that computers have calculated the value of Pi to more than 60 million digits , I think we can safely say that computers readily handle numbers with many digits.

A computer can’t display more digits than the number of particles in the observable universe. This is a finite number. As such it is correct to say that computers struggle if the number of digits is too large. While for practical uses modern computers don’t struggle with finite integers one normally encounters they do struggle with precision in certain circumstances. For 3rd graders I think it’s OK to introduce them to the concept that computers, like all devices, have limitations.

Re: Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

#38
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that people want this. The issue is that these things go off the rails sometimes. Without any supervision and as an “educational” resource it will be unquestioned and in front of people who don’t know enough to question it.

I think we have to just really drill into our minds that, as convincing as these tools are, sometimes they are flat out lying/mistaken/misinformed. If we treat them like our know-it-all friend who is sometimes just a big bullshitter, and take everything with a pinch of salt, then these can be extremely useful tools for learning the big picture if not the specifics. Now, is it reasonable to expect children to be skept…

> Now, is it reasonable to expect children to be skeptical about everything the AI tutor is telling them? Probably not? Maybe?

That might be the single most important thing to teach children now.

Re: Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

#39

If you're pushing a personal education tool that uses AI, you'd better explain exactly how AI is used before I'm going to put it in front of a child.

No user ever sees live/unchecked LLM output, if that's what you're concerned about :-)

(- the core infrastructure engineer on this project)

Re: Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

#40
The biggest part of a classroom is behavior management so I imagine this will not be helpful. The kind of kid who’s motivated can simply use khan academy for free.

Good content is obviously important, but there are literally millions of teachers redundantly creating content every year. It's easy enough to create canonical good content, no AI needed.

I imagine this will be completely ineffective or even counterproductive to an unmotivated, poorly behaved child.

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