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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

#121

Post by godelski »

gfodor wrote: post #72
VyseofArcadia wrote: post #52

> Help resources become inefficient - because so much material is restricted, and so much time is spent on delivering live lectures, there’d often be 40 students competing for help from 2 TAs in a 2-hour Office Hours I had the exact opposite problem when I was both a TA and later a professor. I would beg and plead for my students to come to office hours. "It's free one on one tutoring from the guy who writes the test…

When I went to school office hours was where you went if you wanted to get hints on what you needed to know for the exam, not to learn stuff. It was a means to an end. Honestly I never even considered the idea that office hours could help me better understand the material. Goes to show you what the mind of a college student is like.

It's a difficult balance tbh. You have to struggle to learn so teachers can't just work through the homework problems for you. So they want to give you hints to get you unstuck but not give the answer away. What would be better is to work through a non-homework problem. If this is happening to you, try to find a similar problem in the textbook and work through that one together. They'll still want you to struggle but be more relaxed with giving you hints because they aren't just handing over the solution.

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

#122

Post by CamperBob2 »

ebuck wrote: post #99
WhitneyLand wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have the opposite experience, it’s been a fantastic resource. Were you using 3.5 or 4.0? Do you have an example of of the type of question that performs poorly?

"Under what conditions does the sun appear blue?" (correct answer, on Mars) If you want to tilt the conversation towards a string of wrong answers, start off with "What color is the sun?" "Are you sure?" "I saw the sun and it was blue." "Under what conditions does the sun appear blue?" "Does the sun appear blue on Mars?" This had ChatGPT basically telling me that the sun was yellow 100%. Of course it's wrong, on Mars…

Also the 3.5 / 4.0 arguments are trash, made by the marketing department. The underlying math for language modeling it uses is presenatational.

Translation: "I have no idea what I'm talking about, but anyway, here's a wall of text."

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

#123

Post by entontoent »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #60
zozbot234 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, ChatGPT is not just a parrot but a master troll. It's purposely designed to give you a convincing answer, but there's nothing to ensure that it will be correct. And it will promptly say "actually I can't answer that question" when you ask it something it doesn't like for 'ethical' reasons, but it won't do that in any other circumstance; instead, it will just make stuff up. You have to explicitly say "please don'…

Try ChatGPT4. It's obvious that almost no one in this thread has. It still screws up, but unlike 3.5 it sometimes catches unreasonable answers and corrects itself. Case in point: the other day I asked it for the gain of a helical antenna with certain dimensions. It said "150 dBi," then said, basically, "Wait, no, that's nuts," and used a different approach to get the right answer. Parrots don't do that. If yours does…

I agree! Especially now that the data analysis tools have been integrated by default. It even writes and executes code to validate most of its mathy answers. I tried for a few months to find a good Physics tutor for my high school-aged daughter and eventually just started photographing her homework with GPT-4. I’d ask it to solve the problems and explain its solution to me, then I’d check the answers and teach her myself. It was correct more than 90% of the time over three months, and I relearned high school physics in the process. Even human tutors aren’t always accurate, and in my experience, they also sound confident when they are wrong. Eventually, I decided to just remove the monkey from the machine and got her an account of her own. Almost every day she tells me about something she “finally understands” that she’s been struggling with in class. Her in-class, no-access-to-GPT test scores (after I got her the account) went from high 50s to high 80s.

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

#124

Post by graycat »

> cheap alternative

Here from my experience is a still cheaper alternative: My experience? From 9th grade on, concentrated on math. In college also took a lot of physics. Got a Ph.D. in applied math. Taught math in two big universities. Applied math to US national security (mostly Navy work), FedEx, and computing.

From that some advice:

(1) Get a good outline of math, that is, a list, with short descriptions, of the main subjects, and for each subject get 2-3 of the best books. One source: Course descriptions at the Web sites of some of the best universities. In this, draw ONLY from the very best, e.g., Princeton, etc.

Fact of life: Mostly the teaching and books are, in a word, junk. The worthwhile teaching and books are under 10% of the total. It's simple: A big fraction of the profs are much less good than the best but still teach and write books. Sorry 'bout that. Soooo, did I mention, draw ONLY from the very best. For cheap, pay no tuition. Get the books used, cheap.

(2) Study the books, and work a lot of exercises. Sometimes go through quickly and get only some high points; other times go slowly and try to understand nearly everything there. Sorry, at least in math, it's "not a spectator sport". Maybe a course with lectures can help, but really to do well with the material still have to do that sitting alone with the books. Sorry 'bout that.

(3) Work to understand the psychological, social, national, economic, power, political, competitive, publicity, and business aspects -- these have important effects, and the real world of the subjects is not 100% pure knowledge. E.g., get some understanding about how US/EU academics works. Use this understanding to help make decisions about career directions.

(4) As you proceed, think at least a little about how might do some original research building on what you have learned. Eventually you will find some results to publish, and that will open some special doors for you.

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

#125

Post by newtone »

> it’s very hard to catch-up: once you fall behind, you have no way to review past material efficiently enough to compensate the difference - like credit card debt

It is surprising how many people working in education do not understand this. We have clear understanding on technical debt or cycles of poverty but absolutely no understanding of how learning debt evolves among students. It is so evident that couple of months into any academic session you can already see class performance on any test to be pretty similar to what it is going to be at the end of the year. Even if you know 9 months ago in an academic session that 90% of the students are lagging, you can't/don't do much about it. And the fun part is that all the debt is assumed to vanish when you start a new session. Nobody acknowledges that the kid has been collecting debt for a decade now.

Some friend from college and I developed Filo(askfilo.com), mainly for K12. We connect students to live tutors in realtime into an online class. It doesn't sound very sexy in the AI/LLM world by we are pretty proud of the range of students we have been able to help. Still lot of work to do on it though.

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

#126

Post by dboreham »

zozbot234 wrote: post #53
PheonixPharts wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has used linear algebra, statistics and calculus as part of my day-to-day work for years, I would be very cautious of relying on ChatGPT as your "tutor". Occasionally I've tried to substitute ChatGPT for the shelf of reference books in my office and nearly always had poor results. The trouble is that the outputs of these models, by their very nature, look convincing . Even as an expert it takes a fair…

Yup, ChatGPT is not just a parrot but a master troll. It's purposely designed to give you a convincing answer, but there's nothing to ensure that it will be correct. And it will promptly say "actually I can't answer that question" when you ask it something it doesn't like for 'ethical' reasons, but it won't do that in any other circumstance; instead, it will just make stuff up. You have to explicitly say "please don'…

Thereby passing the Turing Test with flying colors ;)

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

#127

Post by refulgentis »

vundercind wrote: post #98
refulgentis wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think it's a MIT vs. not top 1% uni thing. I'm still scarred by the culture shock I had going from shitty state university dropout from Buffalo to Google employee in Boston. (also, since I'm being brief and might be read incorrectly: it's a very complex thing, Im not making a value judgement, just was rough trying to communicate with people who experienced things very differently than me through 22)

I’ve definitely noticed a type from top universities (not just MIT). It can come off as kinda in-your-face or confrontational or intense. I have some of the same tendencies, and have to rein it in because people really don’t like it—but it seems to be encouraged some places, they do it way more and harder than I ever have. It even throws me off (that part’s probably my midwesternness coming through) My guess is part…

Man you really made me think. If you just blankly asked me what I thought, I would have written your comment verbatim as a fault of the state schooler. I'll be digesting this for a while. I rarely mention it in public, it really meant a lot to me to get someone's thoughts on this, and it was a Moment for me. Cheers.

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

#128

Post by jsqu99 »

prudentpomelo wrote: post #105
jsqu99 wrote: 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…

I am in a similar boat. Starting a masters in cs in the fall. What resources are you using to study? I have neem doing some refreshing on Khan Academy but looking for other options.

i've been all over the place. khan academy was really good for calculus, but man, the linear algebra lectures are really long, w/ no quizzes to keep you practicing. Have read parts of multiple textbooks. Have watched 3blue1brown's excellent series. I've gotten stuck a lot and keep looking for one resource that's 'got it all', but haven't yet found it.

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

#129

Post by atoav »

VyseofArcadia wrote: post #52

> Help resources become inefficient - because so much material is restricted, and so much time is spent on delivering live lectures, there’d often be 40 students competing for help from 2 TAs in a 2-hour Office Hours I had the exact opposite problem when I was both a TA and later a professor. I would beg and plead for my students to come to office hours. "It's free one on one tutoring from the guy who writes the test…

As an academic educator myself I must sadly concur. Students always demand a lot of things, and then they don't use them.

That doesn't mean offering them is a bad thing, because there are people who do, but most students I know "don't have the time" and I know for a fact that they don't do shit. And I know that for a fact because I studied at my university a few years prior. Back then I was a freelancer while studying, ao when I said I don't have timw that meant I had a job. Ut for most of my colleagues that meant they were occupied with loafing around.

Not that everything and everybody needs to be efficient, but if you loaf around blaming a lack of time is a fucking joke. Maybe they are lacking energy, direction, discipline, willpower, ambition, etc. and sure, some — e.g. young mothers — are truly lacking time. But most students are not.

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

#130

Post by bigger_cheese »

VyseofArcadia wrote: post #66
pants2 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to say anything about you, but when I was learning physics, either I thought the professor was really good in which case I would usually understand the material just from lecture, or the professor was not good, in which case going to office hours wouldn't help and I would seek other resources, like YouTube videos from other teachers. A resource like OP's that could provide a different perspective and learning sty…

Good thing I wasn't teaching physics ;) I actually deliberately varied my teaching style during office hours to account for just this. I got great feedback from the few students who actually came. But by the end, I just felt all the extra effort I was putting in to be a good teacher wasn't worth the psychic damage I took from bad students. All this to say, being a good teacher, or trying to be a good teacher, in a un…

Personally in my experience office hours were not that helpful, I was working fulltime at a factory while I was attending university, I simply did not have time to hang around professors offices (My Manager allowed me time off to attend lectures but there was no allowance outside of that), if I needed to study for exams I'd have to take annual leave for example.

Email was single best method I had if I needed to ask professor anything, some professors would reply promptly and some would take weeks to answer an email.

Even if Students don't work fulltime many of them rely on part time jobs (at least here in Australia) - for example one of my housemates worked as a delivery driver for a freight company and another worked in a call center. I think sometimes the professors assume students have more time to spare in the middle of the day then they do.

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