41–50 of 68 posts
Are mathematics students allowed to use calculators, or did they ban those too?
ChatGPT is just a tool, like a calculator. Calculators are banned in certain circumstances and required in others. At first they were probably seen as cheating, but then the system realized they could be used to enhance what kids learn. Why take away a tool that could be used everywhere in life? That's not how progress should work. The system should evolve to embrace such tools, but the obvious problem is that it jus…
Did you even read the article? You completely side stepped the argument they are making: > While the tool may be able to provide quick and easy answers to questions, it does not build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for academic and lifelong success
I learnt a ton from asking random questions to ChatGPT. This move is clearly temporary and will be reversed
My question is, did you learn the truth from ChatGPT? It seems like it will always give plausible sounding answer, that may or may not be correct. For example I asked it today to enumerate the rights given to all christians as part of the priesthood of believers according to Luther. It enumerate a couple of plausible sounding rights. Unfortunately none of them were correct.
It's too bad that it produces such plausible-sounding answers while being subtly wrong. But it can certain help people to expand their knowledge. I don't think it's a replacement for a comprehensive education on a topic, but can help people get closer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see ChatGPT more akin to Wikipedia and Google than a calculator. We don't consider Wikipedia or Google as much of a tool as they are a knowledge reservoir of truthiness.
Have you used it? It can generate code. It can correct grammar. It can create Haikus (poorly). It can give you ideas. It is NOT just a knowledge base.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My question is, did you learn the truth from ChatGPT? It seems like it will always give plausible sounding answer, that may or may not be correct. For example I asked it today to enumerate the rights given to all christians as part of the priesthood of believers according to Luther. It enumerate a couple of plausible sounding rights. Unfortunately none of them were correct.
I am learning a JS game dev platform and ChatGPT has been a GREAT help, even though it’s only right 90% of the time. It cooler if it were an “auto-answer” tool for Stack Overflow. That way I could still get instant answers, and the community could asynchronously validate the answers.
ChatGPT is just a tool, like a calculator. Calculators are banned in certain circumstances and required in others. At first they were probably seen as cheating, but then the system realized they could be used to enhance what kids learn. Why take away a tool that could be used everywhere in life? That's not how progress should work. The system should evolve to embrace such tools, but the obvious problem is that it jus…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that calculators are correct 100% of the time, ChatGPT is not. What makes it more difficult is that it's often really hard to tell when ChatGPT is correct or not.
For whom is that a problem, in this case? If you have a hallucinating computer do your test and it doesn’t work out for you, that’s on you.
I'd say ChatGPT is a bit better as a tool than copying from a colleague, just because you still have to double check for correctness. However, does it rob students of that opportunity to think deeply and therefore learn? I'm not sure to what extent, but I'd imagine that there's an impact to _some_ extent.
ChatGPT is also going to get better, and will eventually be pretty accurate (or, at least as accurate as a student of a subject may be). My stance is that in school, you should be learning to think instead of memorising. If the goal is to memorise, however, then use ChatGPT isn't that harmful (you'll still fail for memorising the wrong information).
Overall I'd treat ChatGPT as a tool, and give students the facts: first gain a deep understanding of a subject so you can learn to verify, then use the tool later in life.
I'm also mindful of the fact that if an AI is not guaranteed to be correct, which is the case right now, then students now have an incentive to _understand_ the subject so they can verify, which might actually be a net good?
I've said it in another thread, but if you have to ban a tool to preserve the value of some course or examination then it's likely they have little to no value in the real world. In most cases the courses are fine, but the examination probably isn't testing anything useful if it can be cheated with tools like ChatGPT. For example any maths test which only tests students on problems which are easily solvable by a calc…
True in university, but memorizing multiplication tables and learning the mechanics of long division and multiplication are important parts or math education for kids. Most of school is not strictly for "real world" skills anyway (even if doing basic math unaided is almost as close as we come in school to teaching a real world skill).
Same goes for say, basic reading comprehension and summarization.
I don't buy your argument
I'm sure they're concerned about essay writing, but my kid has been using to help with physics and math homework. Not for basic calculator functions, but it's surprisingly good at giving formulas for complex problems. You can ask things like how to calculate the angle in degrees of fired projectile given initial velocity and range and it will give a formula. Then you can rephrase for how to solve for velocity given r…
--- AMC 8 The only materials that students are allowed to have on themselves during the competition are writing utensils, blank scratch paper, rulers, and erasers. NO CALCULATORS OR PHONES AND SIMILAR ELECTRONIC DEVICES OF ANY KIND ARE ALLOWED. No questions require the use of a calculator.
AMC 10/12 - AIME The only materials that students are allowed to have on themselves during the competition are writing utensils, blank scratch paper, rulers, compasses, and erasers. NO CALCULATORS OR PHONES AND SIMILAR ELECTRONIC DEVICES OF ANY KIND ARE ALLOWED. No questions require the use of a calculator. --
Mathcounts[2] is kinder, but only a little bit - "Calculators are not permitted in the Sprint and Countdown Rounds, but they are permitted in the Target, Team and Tiebreaker Rounds". There are 500+ chapter rounds every year, plus 56 state rounds, & each school sends upto 12 contestants, so again a very large number of students compete in these exams with no calculator.
Note when they say "No questions require the use of a calculator" - that's quite a dubious claim. For eg. the question which is bigger 9^10 or 10^9 ? With a calculator it becomes trivial. Without, you take logs to base 10 and do some simple arithmetic by hand. For most trig problem sets, you'd have to know the standard sines & cosines. With a calculator that becomes moot.
[1] https://www.maa.org/math-competitions/amc-policies [2] https://www.mathcounts.org/programs/official-rules-procedure...