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I quiz ChatGPT about math

billwadge.com

11–20 of 96 posts

Re: I quiz ChatGPT about math

#11
post #4

> Substituting our values into this formula, we get: x1 = (3 + (10 / 3)) / 2 = 5 This is really wrong, why didn't the poster notice this? They just said > 3.4 is not a very good approximation but other than that the response is correct. No, Newtons method produces a really good approximation for square root very quickly, ChatGPT didn't do the method correctly which is why the result is so bad. People who can't instan…

I spotted that too, also the next iteration is 3.5 even though 5 should have never been fed in?

Re: I quiz ChatGPT about math

#12
Here's a very easy middle school competition problem - https://imgur.com/a/YdFSBVY

It repeatedly got the answer wrong. I engaged in a long conversation with it (too long to post) where I tried to convince it that its answer was wrong, but it became quite rude at a certain point & alleged I was trying to trick it or something (?!) so I just gave up. Unfortunately, I was doing the whole exercise in front of my 10 year old who was initially very excited about ChatGPT. After seeing its behavior, he is now convinced that its dumb as dirt.

If you look at the problem, ChatGPT's answer is the 2nd term of the input series! Obviously an all positive series can't have one of its own terms as an answer, the answer better be bigger than each of its terms. So forget about calculation, it has no logical reasoning ability either.

Re: I quiz ChatGPT about math

#13

I quizzed ChatGPT about math a few days back. It correctly answers that 1023 is odd, correctly answers that the square of an odd number is also odd, and is about 50/50 on whether it decides 1023^2 is even or odd. The author of the linked post repeatedly refers to ChatGPT's "reasoning". But ChatGPT doesn't reason, it just generates text. Sometimes that text might look like reasoning to a human--it's the sort of text t…

How do you know there is no reasoning involved?

Re: I quiz ChatGPT about math

#14
Anyone who has bothered to cut through the hype of ChatGPT, would already have realised that it isn't smart at math and is only regurgitating the results that it has been already been trained on and will present it to you to make itself 'appear' intelligent.

It doesn't even know why it is gives you the wrong answer even when it is presenting the generated output as correct. Like what another commenter said, it has limited or in this case has little to no reasoning; because it is unable to transparently explain itself and cannot present novel solutions to unseen and unsolved problems in mathematics.

ChatGPT is as good as an abacus for mathematics, with the explainability of a brainless parrot.

Re: I quiz ChatGPT about math

#15
I was actually very impressed with some math questions it was able to answer for me:

S: If flabb means three, snabb means four, and whabb mean five, what is flabb plus whabb?

If flabb means three, snabb means four, and whabb means five, then flabb plus whabb would be equal to three plus five, or eight. In this made-up numbering system, the words “flabb,” “snabb,” and “whabb” represent the numbers three, four, and five, respectively. When these numbers are added together, the result is the number eight.

S: If bbb means three, bbbb means four and bbbbb means five, how do you think you would write six?

If bbb means three, bbbb means four, and bbbbb means five, then six could potentially be represented by the word “bbbbbbb.” In this made-up numbering system, the number of "b"s in a word corresponds to the value of the number it represents. Therefore, to represent the number six, one possible way would be to add another “b” to the end of the word for five, which would give us “bbbbbbb” as the representation of six. This is just one possible way to represent six in this numbering system, and there may be other ways to do it as well.

S: Why do people argue about the answer of mathematical questions like “8 / 2(2+2)”?

There are a few reasons why people may argue about the answer to a mathematical question like “8 / 2(2+2)”. One reason is that there is more than one wav to interpret the question and arrive at a different answer. For example, some people may interpret the question as “8 / (2 * (2+2))” and arrive at an answer of 1, while others mav interpret it as “(8 / 2) * (2+2)” and arrive at an answer of 16.

Re: I quiz ChatGPT about math

#17
post #12

Here's a very easy middle school competition problem - https://imgur.com/a/YdFSBVY It repeatedly got the answer wrong. I engaged in a long conversation with it (too long to post) where I tried to convince it that its answer was wrong, but it became quite rude at a certain point & alleged I was trying to trick it or something (?!) so I just gave up. Unfortunately, I was doing the whole exercise in front of my 10 year…

You should basically be thinking of chatGPT as a personal Wikipedia. It has the collective knowledge of the internet. It can still be wrong about fact based questions, but is a good starting point. It’s not effective at doing math because that’s not what it was designed to do.

Re: I quiz ChatGPT about math

#18

I quizzed ChatGPT about math a few days back. It correctly answers that 1023 is odd, correctly answers that the square of an odd number is also odd, and is about 50/50 on whether it decides 1023^2 is even or odd. The author of the linked post repeatedly refers to ChatGPT's "reasoning". But ChatGPT doesn't reason, it just generates text. Sometimes that text might look like reasoning to a human--it's the sort of text t…

Prompt: > is 1023^2 even or odd? Response: > 1023 squared is even because it is equal to 1,046,529, which is an even number. To determine if a number is even or odd, you can check whether it is divisible by 2. If it is divisible by 2, it is even. If it is not divisible by 2, it is odd. > In general, any number that is a perfect square will be even if the number being squared is odd, and it will be odd if the number b…

Interesting, I got:

> 1023 squared is 1048129, which is an odd number. To determine whether a number is even or odd, you can check whether it is divisible by 2. If it is, it is an even number. If it is not, it is an odd number. In this case, 1048129 is not divisible by 2, so it is an odd number.

Re: I quiz ChatGPT about math

#19

I quizzed ChatGPT about math a few days back. It correctly answers that 1023 is odd, correctly answers that the square of an odd number is also odd, and is about 50/50 on whether it decides 1023^2 is even or odd. The author of the linked post repeatedly refers to ChatGPT's "reasoning". But ChatGPT doesn't reason, it just generates text. Sometimes that text might look like reasoning to a human--it's the sort of text t…

Your 5 year old is doing number theory? I think I was still working on like counting when I was 5

Re: I quiz ChatGPT about math

#20
post #12

Here's a very easy middle school competition problem - https://imgur.com/a/YdFSBVY It repeatedly got the answer wrong. I engaged in a long conversation with it (too long to post) where I tried to convince it that its answer was wrong, but it became quite rude at a certain point & alleged I was trying to trick it or something (?!) so I just gave up. Unfortunately, I was doing the whole exercise in front of my 10 year…

You should basically be thinking of chatGPT as a personal Wikipedia. It has the collective knowledge of the internet. It can still be wrong about fact based questions, but is a good starting point. It’s not effective at doing math because that’s not what it was designed to do.

ChatGPT definitely way more things than Wikipedia does.
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