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Show HN: I made a cheap alternative to college-level math & physics tutoring

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Re: Show HN: I made a cheap alternative to college-level math & physics tutoring

#22
post #18

Anything to democratize education is a good thing, so I'm really happy to see this and hope it takes off!

Wouldn't "decentralize" or "diversify" be a better term than "democratize" here? I don't really see the democracy involved as opposed to simply having a broader disaspora of education. Agree with your point though.

When people say "democratize X" they mean to bring it to the masses, so that it's accessible to everyone.

I wouldn't say this decentralizes or diversifies anything. This is 1 website, making it a central point. And it's just the same math. Diversity, in any form I can think of, has nothing to do with it.

Re: Show HN: I made a cheap alternative to college-level math & physics tutoring

#23
I am 53 and cramming while relearning linear algebra, statistics, and calculus, after a 30 year break from college, in preparation for my first semester at GA Tech's online MS CS program in the fall. I love this! But...before I check it out, I'm going to be surprised if it competes with the already-incredible free help i've gotten from chatgpt-3.5. Recently I asked it the following (where it made a mistake that confused me!), but i followed up w/ a question about it, and it corrected the mistake and re-answered the question, all with no wait at all, and free:

```Given a new 3x3 matrix A having columns (4,2,2), (-1,1,-1), and (6,6,8) and an eigenvalue of 2, help me find a basis for the corresponding eigenspace. Also, given that I is the 3x3 identity matrix, why does the equation (A - 2I)x = 0 having free variables make it obvious that 2 is indeed an eigenvalue.```

I'm still going to check out your site, and I do wish you well, but i'm curious how it will stack up against AI tutors.

Re: Show HN: I made a cheap alternative to college-level math & physics tutoring

#24
post #23

I am 53 and cramming while relearning linear algebra, statistics, and calculus, after a 30 year break from college, in preparation for my first semester at GA Tech's online MS CS program in the fall. I love this! But...before I check it out, I'm going to be surprised if it competes with the already-incredible free help i've gotten from chatgpt-3.5. Recently I asked it the following (where it made a mistake that confu…

Why a MS after 30 years? No negativity meant, just curious

Re: Show HN: I made a cheap alternative to college-level math & physics tutoring

#25
post #23

I am 53 and cramming while relearning linear algebra, statistics, and calculus, after a 30 year break from college, in preparation for my first semester at GA Tech's online MS CS program in the fall. I love this! But...before I check it out, I'm going to be surprised if it competes with the already-incredible free help i've gotten from chatgpt-3.5. Recently I asked it the following (where it made a mistake that confu…

This is inspiring. I would love to learn math and CS again but I don't know if I have the courage to enroll in college again.

Re: Show HN: I made a cheap alternative to college-level math & physics tutoring

#26
post #23

I am 53 and cramming while relearning linear algebra, statistics, and calculus, after a 30 year break from college, in preparation for my first semester at GA Tech's online MS CS program in the fall. I love this! But...before I check it out, I'm going to be surprised if it competes with the already-incredible free help i've gotten from chatgpt-3.5. Recently I asked it the following (where it made a mistake that confu…

You should try ChatGPT4 out too it might have succeeded where 3.5 failed

Re: Show HN: I made a cheap alternative to college-level math & physics tutoring

#28
post #23

I am 53 and cramming while relearning linear algebra, statistics, and calculus, after a 30 year break from college, in preparation for my first semester at GA Tech's online MS CS program in the fall. I love this! But...before I check it out, I'm going to be surprised if it competes with the already-incredible free help i've gotten from chatgpt-3.5. Recently I asked it the following (where it made a mistake that confu…

As a counterpoint I've been studying for leisure by doing exercises in math textbooks, and with advanced undergrad/grad topics my experience with ChatGPT and Gemini is that they fail miserably where they try basic proof techniques that they think work but don't.

Trying to marshal their help is a puzzle in figuring out where they made leaps in logic, pointing those out, to exhaustion until they acknowledge their lack of ability and give up.

It's really reminiscent of talking to overconfident and eager to please youth not realizing that they are tackling something beyond their ability.

Re: Show HN: I made a cheap alternative to college-level math & physics tutoring

#29
The Piazza post isn't publicly viewable, but I'm surprised you had this experience at MIT. The majority of classes I took had a ton of materials online and there were few instances where I felt I needed to go to class purely because of an attendance policy or a reluctance to share materials. Office hours are designed to be 1 on 1 for educational reasons, but other students collaborating at office hours (or outside of them) was encouraged on psets. I wouldn't expect any of this to be worse post-COVID either. Maybe a course 8 issue? But I'd be sad to hear this was the case now with 6 or 18 because it certainly wasn't in the past (and MIT was way ahead of peer institutions on this historically, in large part due to OCW)
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