Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

synthesis.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–69 of 69 posts

Re: Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

#61

Post by terrycody »

What a good day for me! What a splendid learning experience! So glad I've clicked this link on HN today.

I am not a coder yet, but always wanna learn it, and indeed self learning elementory level math now. I felt I was so stupid when I tried to read even very basic CS materials, watch Youtube videos, I was very struggle with very basic things, also have no consistent time, then stopped many times, so now I start to learn basic math again, then consider the CS50/Youtube/CS books -->coding/game engine this routine.

I finished the demo, I never experienced such a good interractive learning way before, and thrilled want to tell everyone whom want to learn things a great tool like this exists.

Now I know, there are great tools like this one, learning thing is not necessarily borning and hard, it can be easy and smoothing, and a nice enjoy.

I hope guys/gals can make more tools like this.

PS: "timed out for waiting speech" is a bit annoying in Chrome, maybe I got slow internet? Also, the voice is robotic, maybe use a more lively sound would be better?

I can't wait for next lessons, I want to learn things like this way!!

Re: Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

#62

Post by kirkules »

burnished wrote: post #29
acomjean wrote: post #14

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.

Eh, its a lot easier to question a machine that isn't also defending its ego. Kids are quick to spot and question a contradiction until that behavior is socialized away - an LLM doesnt get impatient when you ask a bunch of questions, or dismiss you because it thinks the question is dumb. It can be a good tool.

Sure, an LLM based tool may happily double down on a wrong position, and articulately address a student's concerns in doing so, possibly hallucinating convincing evidence.

Re: Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

#63

Post by barrenko »

vintermann wrote: post #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.

Could you please post what the app for languages was, can't seem to find it.

Re: Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

#64

Post by rokkitmensch »

barrenko wrote: post #63
vintermann wrote: post #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.

Could you please post what the app for languages was, can't seem to find it.

giglish

Re: Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

#65

Post by pimlottc »

brennancolberg wrote: post #39
pimlottc wrote: post #13

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)

Good to know; that info should be on the page!

Re: Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

#66

Post by burnished »

kirkules wrote: post #62
burnished wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, its a lot easier to question a machine that isn't also defending its ego. Kids are quick to spot and question a contradiction until that behavior is socialized away - an LLM doesnt get impatient when you ask a bunch of questions, or dismiss you because it thinks the question is dumb. It can be a good tool.

Sure, an LLM based tool may happily double down on a wrong position, and articulately address a student's concerns in doing so, possibly hallucinating convincing evidence.

Human tutors have this same failure mode. And at that point its pretty easy to have people come to the teacher when things get squirrelly in any way.

Re: Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

#67

Post by 2snakes »

aoki wrote: post #59
2snakes wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is accredited though. College credit?

They don't grant degrees or diplomas. As such it is presumably accredited as a Supplementary Education Program and (like JHU CTY, Stanford ULO, and AoPS) do not grant credit. Such programs can be the basis of credits if your "real" high school accepts them, though.

Right, ymmv for transfers at either a hs or college. But the accredited status makes it possible to get approval. MA say they can make the documentation available manually and will automatically in the future.

Re: Synthesis Tutor – Math tutor for children

#69

Post by light_hue_1 »

symic wrote: post #52
musicale wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 There are two sources of error here: 1. Your interpretation is essentially "computers struggle to complete tasks that are impossible for them to complete" - a meaningless tautology. At best it is "nothing scal…

I think you don’t tech professionally.

I teach professionally.

You don't need to tell kids things that are misleading nonsense. It only confuses them more. You can be precise and high level at the same time.

In no sense do computers struggle with digits. That's a misleading confusing statement and it's not appropriate at any age.

Post reply on HN