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How University Students Use Claude

anthropic.com

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Re: How University Students Use Claude

#431

Post by fhd2 »

lelanthran wrote: post #415
chii wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would fail the quizzes. not those who did actually do the work, and learnt. The change ought to be that students are allowed to be failed, and this should be a form of punishment for those who "cheat".

Aren't students already allowed to fail? As a comment upthread said, let them cheat on the take home as much as they want to, they're still going to fail the exam.

Well, from what I understand, the answer is kinda "no".

Depends on the country and educational system I suppose, but I do believe professors in many places get in trouble for failing too many students. It's right there in the phrasing.

If most students pass and some fail, that's fine. Revenue comes in, graduates are produced, the university is happy.

If most students fail, revenue goes down, less students might sign up, less graduate, the university is unhappy.

It's a tragedy of the commons situation, because some professors will be happy to pass the majority of students regardless of merit. Then the professors that don't become the problem, there's something wrong with them.

Likewise, if most universities are easy and some are really hard, they might not attract students. The US has this whole prestige thing going on, that I haven't seen all that much in other countries.

So if the students overall get dumber because they grow up over relying on tools, the correction mechanism is not that they have to work harder once the exam approaches. It's that the exam gets easier.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#432

Post by danielbln »

c22 wrote: post #123
hackyhacky wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The irreducible answer to "why should I" is that it makes you ever-more-increasingly reliant on a teetering tower of fragile and interdependent supply chains furnished by for-profit companies who are all too eager to rake you over the coals to fulfill basic cognitive functions. Yes, but that horse has long ago left the barn. I don't know how to grow crops, build a house, tend livestock, make clothes, weld metal, bu…

Specialization is over-rated. I've done everything in your list except make an ASIC because learning how to do those things was interesting and I prefer when things are done my way. I started way back in my 20s just figuring out how to write websites. I'm not sure where the camel's back would have broken. It has, of course, been convenient to be able to "bootstrap" my self-reliance in these and other fields by consum…

Jack of all trades, master of none. I also somehow doubt that you've built a car from scratch, including designing the engine, carving it out of a block of metal and so on. And if we're talking modern car, good luck fabbing the integrated circuits in your backyard or whatever. Even your particular generalist fantasy will (and most likely has) hit the hard constraints of specialization real quick.

There is no single human alive that can understand or build a modern computer from top to bottom. And this is true for various bits of human technology, that's how specialized we are as a species.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#433

Post by noisy_boy »

moojacob wrote: post #86

How can I, as a student, avoid hindering my learning with language models? I use Claude, a lot. I’ll upload the slides and ask questions. I’ve talked to Claude for hours trying to break down a problem. I think I’m learning more. But what I think might not be what’s happening. In one of my machine learning classes, cheating is a huge issue. People are using LMs to answer multiple choice questions on quizzes that are o…

I don't think the pain of losing points is a good learning incentive, powerful sure but not effective.

You would learn more if you tell Claude to not give outright answers but generate more problems where you are weak for you to solve. That reduction in errors as you go along will be the positive reinforcement that will work long term.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#434

Post by nkrisc »

djmips wrote: post #360
suddenlybananas wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If kids don't go through the struggle of understanding arithmetic, higher math will be very very difficult. Just because you can use a calculator, doesn't mean that's the best way to learn . Likewise for using LLMs to program.

I have no anecdata to counter your thesis. I do agree that immersion in the doing of a thing is the best way to learn. I am not fully convinced that doing a lot of arithmetic hand calculation precludes learning the science of patterns that is mathematics. They should still be doing something mathematical but why not go right into using a calculator. I have no experience as an educator and I bet it's hard to get good…

I'm not an educator but I know from teaching my own children that you don't introduce math using symbols and abstract representations. You grab 5 of some small object and show them how a pile of 2 objects combined with a pile of 3 objects creates a pile of 5 objects.

Remember, language is a natural skill all humans have. So is counting (a skill that may not even be unique to humans).

However writing is an artifical technology invented by humans. Writing is not natural in the sense that language itself is. There is no part of brain we're born with that comes ready to write. Instead, when we learn to write other parts of our brain that are associated with language and hearing and vision are co-opted into the "writing and reading parts".

Teaching kids math using writing and symbolism is unnatural and often an abstraction too far for them (initially). Introducing written math is easier and makes more sense once kids are also learning to read and write - their brains are being rewired by that process. However even an toddler can look at a pile of 3 objects and a pile of 5 objects and know which one is more, even if they can't explicitly count them using language - let alone read and write.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#435

Post by Jedd »

flir wrote: post #220
Jedd wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is literally not true.

I'd be interested in counter-examples?

Given the original, ludicrous, claim was:

> Literally all progress we've made is due to ever increasing specialization.

Then we don't really need plural examples, right?

Anyway - language, wheel, fire, tool-making, social constructs like reciprocity principle - I think gave us some progress as a species and a society.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#436

Post by Ekaros »

layer8 wrote: post #273
bboygravity wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this reasoning. Without LLMs I would learn how to write sub-optimal code that is somewhat functional. With LLMs instantly see "how it's done" for my exact problem case which makes me learn way faster. On top of that it always makes dumb mistakes which forces you to actually understand what it's spitting out to get it to work properly. Again: that helps with learning. The fact that you can ask it for a sol…

It’s more like looking up the solution to the math problem you’re supposed to solve on your own. It can be helpful in some situations, but in general you don’t learn the problem-solving skills if you don’t do it yourself.

Exactly. For vast majority of students myself included just looking at ready solution is actually very poor way to study. And LLMs are exactly this. Ready solution generators. Doing with things like math and programming is learning.

And same goes for art. You do not become master in art by looking at art or even someone drawing...

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#437

Post by andai »

Zanfa wrote: post #422
enjo wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's literally "let me paste the assignment into ChatGPT and see what it spits out, change a few words and submit that". My wife is an accounting professor. For many years her battle was with students using Chegg and the like. They would submit roughly correct answers but because she would rotate the underlying numbers they would always be wrong in a provably cheating way. This made up 5-8% of her students. Now she…

ChatGPT is laughably terrible at double entry accounting. A few weeks ago I was trying to use it to figure out a reasonable way to structure accounts for a project given the different business requirements I had. It kept disappearing money when giving examples. Pointing it out didn’t help either, it just apologized and went on to make the same mistake in a different way.

Using a system based on randomness for a process that must occur deterministically is probably the wrong solution.

I'm running into similar issues trying to use LLMs for logic and reasoning.

They can do it (surprisingly well, once you disable the friendliness that prevents it), but you get a different random subset of correct answers every time.

I don't know if setting temperature to 0 would help. You'd get the same output every time, but it would be the same incomplete / wrong output.

Probably a better solution is a multi phase thing, where you generate a bunch of outputs and then collect and filter them.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#438

Post by brunocroh »

juped wrote: post #183
brunocroh wrote: post #20

I simply don't waste my time reading an AD as an article. I take this as seriously as I would if McDonald's published articles about how much weight people lose eating at McDonald's.

I'm curious if you're willing to say what you (and potentially other people who spell 'AD' like that) think it's an acronym for, by the way.

English is not my first language. To me, 'AD' was a shorter way to say 'advertisement' (a really hard word to remember how to spell btw) Is that wrong?

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#439

Post by brunocroh »

brunocroh wrote: post #438
juped wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious if you're willing to say what you (and potentially other people who spell 'AD' like that) think it's an acronym for, by the way.

English is not my first language. To me, 'AD' was a shorter way to say 'advertisement' (a really hard word to remember how to spell btw) Is that wrong?

I get what you're saying now. I can write it in lowercase, right? It's just that I see people writing it that way, so I end up repeating their behavior without even realizing it.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#440

Post by djeastm »

shinycode wrote: post #385
Stubbs wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone already said, parents used to be concerned that kids wouldn't be able to solve maths problems without a calculator, and it's the same problem, but there's a difference between solving problems _with_ LLMs, and having LLMs solve it _for you_. I don't see the former as that much of a problem.

Well the extent is much broader from a calculator vs an LLM. Why should I hire you if an agent can do it ? LLM is every job is a calculator and can be replaced. Spotify CEO stated on X that before asking for more headcount they have to justify not being able to do the job with an agent. So all the students who let the LLM do their assignment and learn basically nothing, what’s their value for a company to be hired ?…

Fyi it was Shopify, not Spotify.
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