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I quiz ChatGPT about math

billwadge.com

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Re: I quiz ChatGPT about math

#51

Post by CrazyStat »

awestroke wrote: post #13
CrazyStat wrote: post #3

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?

If there was reasoning it would consistently get the parity of 1023^2 correct.

Re: I quiz ChatGPT about math

#52

Post by [deleted] »

SamBam wrote: post #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 fiv…

[deleted]

Re: I quiz ChatGPT about math

#53

Post by chrsjxn »

jfzoid wrote: post #39

I just tried doing this myself JFZ: how do we know there are infinitely many primes ChatGPT: One way to show that there are infinitely many prime numbers is to use the fact that the set of prime numbers is infinite to show that there must be an infinite number of composite numbers as well. Composite numbers are positive integers that have at least one positive integer divisor other than 1 and itself. For example, 4 i…

The first proof is basically just begging the question.

It says that having infinitely many composite numbers must mean infinitely many factors, and thus infinitely many primes.

But we can construct infinite sets of numbers from finite prime factors easily. [2] and the powers of 2.

Which might be a good starting point to teach someone Euclid's proof that there are infinite primes, but ChatGPT didn't get all the way there.

Re: I quiz ChatGPT about math

#54

Post by bawolff »

teawrecks wrote: post #26
bawolff wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is significantly underselling wikipedia's reliability in practise.

The point is that Wikipedia is infinitely more fallible than a mathematical equation.

That doesn't make sense. Math equations are expressions of ideas. They can be fallible as much as anything else. Just because 1+1=3 is an equation doesn't make it true.

Re: I quiz ChatGPT about math

#55

Post by omnicognate »

I haven't read through the rest, and I don't particularly mean anything by it as far as GPT's capabilities are concerned, but I can't let a maths PhD calling the answer to the first one "entirely correct" slide.

> is given by the square root of the difference of the squares of the x-coordinates plus the difference of the squares of the y-coordinates.

This would be (in the example it then gives) either `sqrt(x^2 - a^2) + y^2 - b^2` or `sqrt(x^2 - a^2 + y^2 - b^2)`, both entirely incorrect.

Which does illustrate something important about human capabilities. A person who knows the right answer is likely to see the right answer when presented with a wrong answer that's sufficiently close to it.

Re: I quiz ChatGPT about math

#56

Post by alar44 »

These threads are getting tiring. Yes, ChatGPT is shitty at math. It's not supposed to be good at it. It's really good at what 99% of the population throws at it, but of course the internet dorks are huffing and puffing that it can't do advanced math or doesn't know some obscure theorem. No one cares and it's not the point.

Re: I quiz ChatGPT about math

#57

Post by Waterluvian »

I ran into what I think is a fascinating example of a current limitation of it to "understand" (whatever you want that to mean for an AI).

I asked it to make a Python generator that yielded primes. It did so and explained how it worked. It was a very inefficient approach but worked fine and was clean.

"Okay, now instead of printing the output, can you write it to a sqlite database?" And it modified the code in a pretty good way.

"Great, can you modify it so that it only return primes greater than 2?" It did so fastidiously, adding a check at the end.

"Can a prime number ever be even?" It explained that 2 is the only even prime.

"Can you modify the function so that it only returns even primes greater than 2?" And so it added a conditional check at the end which guaranteed that the function would never return again.

As a bonus, I just asked it again:

"No, prime numbers are defined as positive integers that have exactly two positive integer factors: 1 and themselves. Since even numbers are defined as integers that are divisible by 2, prime numbers can never be even. The first few prime numbers are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, and 19. All of these numbers are odd."

Re: I quiz ChatGPT about math

#58

Post by [deleted] »

SamBam wrote: post #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 fiv…

[deleted]

Re: I quiz ChatGPT about math

#60

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

wyldfire wrote: post #34
SamBam wrote: post #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 fiv…

> 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. Wow, this is kinda…

8 / 2(2+2) was an internet meme, so not that astonishing. It should be in the training set somewhere.
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