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Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests

hechingerreport.org

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Re: Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests

#161

Post by xigoi »

mym1990 wrote: post #37
lll-o-lll wrote: post #5

When I was young, and learning math, my father always forbade me from looking at the answer in the back of the textbook. “You don’t work backwards from the answer!”, and I think this is right. In life, we rarely have the answer in front of us, we have to work that out from the things we know. It’s this struggling that builds a muscle you can then apply to any problem. ChatGPT, I suspect, is akin to looking up the ans…

I think it depends on how the tool is used. If a student is just plugging in the problem and asking for the answer, there is clearly no long term benefit to this. If the student is trying to understand a concept, and uses GPT to bounce ideas around or to ask for alternate ways of thinking about something, it can be very helpful. How spacing is utilized can be helpful too. Struggle with the problem for 20-30 minutes.…

> If the student is trying to understand a concept, and uses GPT to bounce ideas around or to ask for alternate ways of thinking about something, it can be very helpful.

The article said that even using the AI this way did not improve results.

Re: Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests

#162

Post by aabbcc1241 »

ffsm8 wrote: post #120
wisty wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. Current research is that experts are better with a ChatGTP, and beginners worse. An expert knows what to ask, and a beginner juat flails around. Tools like calculators, ChatGTP, Google, and chainsaws are often force magnifiers for experts, and a danger for beginners. If you have an idea of what you are trying to do at a deep level then they are great, but beginners don't, they usually just use them as a sho…

> Current research is that experts are better with a ChatGTP, and beginners worse. Current research being your opinion? Because literally every expert I personally know to be competent says that they're essentially garbage producers and don't use them beyond occasionally checking if they've improved. And no, they haven't. The only way to get decent code from them is to be so specific that you'd be able to produce the…

seems it's more about active thinking vs just get the job done mindset

Re: Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests

#163

Post by iercu »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #5

When I was young, and learning math, my father always forbade me from looking at the answer in the back of the textbook. “You don’t work backwards from the answer!”, and I think this is right. In life, we rarely have the answer in front of us, we have to work that out from the things we know. It’s this struggling that builds a muscle you can then apply to any problem. ChatGPT, I suspect, is akin to looking up the ans…

[dead]

Re: Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests

#164

Post by mym1990 »

xigoi wrote: post #161
mym1990 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends on how the tool is used. If a student is just plugging in the problem and asking for the answer, there is clearly no long term benefit to this. If the student is trying to understand a concept, and uses GPT to bounce ideas around or to ask for alternate ways of thinking about something, it can be very helpful. How spacing is utilized can be helpful too. Struggle with the problem for 20-30 minutes.…

> If the student is trying to understand a concept, and uses GPT to bounce ideas around or to ask for alternate ways of thinking about something, it can be very helpful. The article said that even using the AI this way did not improve results.

All we know is the tools that were given to the students, not how they used them, and it’s a fairly limited study on top of that, without knowing anything about how other variables were controlled. That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised if the payoff from AI learning isn’t as good as people might think, there still has to be a good process in place and I don’t think it can replace a good teacher and some quality struggle.

Re: Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests

#165

Post by adrianN »

wongarsu wrote: post #88
ShadowBlades512 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is very correct for studying, when I was in undergrad, if I saw the answer, I found it was more effective to skip past it and solve it later. Even more important, once I am done, I should not go look at the answer to confirm if I am right or wrong, I should try and validate the answer by looking at my solution and trying to figure out if my solution is correct or not because there are plenty of ways to "…

Half of modern mathematics is basically assuming something is true and then trying to work forwards and backwards to show that it is true. But that requires a lot of rigor. If you hand-wave a single step you are just exercising an advanced version of confirmation bias. Working forwards and sanity checking your result is a lot more forgiving.

Guessing something and then confirming it is completely different from knowing the answer and then working towards it, especially for the kinds of problems that students solve in school. For the kind of proofs that working research mathematicians produce the hard part is not assuming that a Lemma is true, but already coming up with the correct definitions to formulate the Lemma in the first place is a delicate task.

Re: Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests

#166

Post by adrianN »

notatoad wrote: post #65
lll-o-lll wrote: post #5

When I was young, and learning math, my father always forbade me from looking at the answer in the back of the textbook. “You don’t work backwards from the answer!”, and I think this is right. In life, we rarely have the answer in front of us, we have to work that out from the things we know. It’s this struggling that builds a muscle you can then apply to any problem. ChatGPT, I suspect, is akin to looking up the ans…

>In life, we rarely have the answer in front of us, this sounds a lot like the "when you're an adult, you won't always have a calculator in your pocket" line we all heard in elementary school. and of course, we all know now how wrong that was. in life, chatGPT exists. and tools like it are only going to become more widespread. we are going to have the answers in front of us. knowing the things an LLM knows is not a u…

Unless you can do the task yourself, you have a very hard time figuring out whether the LLM hallucinates or not. Relying on ChatGPT for your education is the path towards believing fake news.

Re: Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests

#167

Post by fasa99 »

notatoad wrote: post #65
lll-o-lll wrote: post #5

When I was young, and learning math, my father always forbade me from looking at the answer in the back of the textbook. “You don’t work backwards from the answer!”, and I think this is right. In life, we rarely have the answer in front of us, we have to work that out from the things we know. It’s this struggling that builds a muscle you can then apply to any problem. ChatGPT, I suspect, is akin to looking up the ans…

>In life, we rarely have the answer in front of us, this sounds a lot like the "when you're an adult, you won't always have a calculator in your pocket" line we all heard in elementary school. and of course, we all know now how wrong that was. in life, chatGPT exists. and tools like it are only going to become more widespread. we are going to have the answers in front of us. knowing the things an LLM knows is not a u…

(1) chatGTP is not a calculator. A calculator resolutely computes the exact numerical answer (modulo finite bits and rational numbers etc). ChatGTP is more stochastic. sometimes it's right, maybe a lot of the time, but no promises! (2) said student is taking an exam to find answers without the benefit of ChatGTP. Thusly doing exercises in a ChatGTP will not benefit the exam in the same way someone who only uses the calculator will suck at mental math. similar to what some of us may have seen "no calculators allowed on math exam"

but the big hangup is that "stochastically correct/incorrect" part. Can't count on it, still need skillz. Maybe when straberry/q* drops things will change in this regard

Re: Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests

#168

Post by ddfs123 »

rossant wrote: post #100
ddfs123 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we all know now how wrong that was. How wrong was it ? I find myself having to do head math every time I playing video games.

Which video games?

League of Legends.

Just knowing that your combo can finish an opponent can switches your situation from very passive to very aggressive. Also some jungle / gank timing require clock math.

I think most serious / pro players memorize the numbers already. But casual players like me still have do head math.

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