Meet my AI maths tutor!

I took a step back from panic quitting. What I need is a tutor…I could take a course, jump into Kahn academy, or Google search….or I could use the world class tutor right at my finger tips: ChatGPT.

It’s time to work with my co-pilot on my maths learning.

Dear ChatGPT “imagine you are explaining to a non-mathematician…remind me how to integrate )”.

And it’s remarkably helpful in doing so. Just look at the left image.

It goes through all the steps explaining along the way what it is doing. Even showing the functions in readable form. It is that explanation I’m after, which I can then apply to my working.

Of course, a simple google search will return a whole host of pages that give the same information (ChatGPT had to get it from somewhere, right).

But with ChatGPT I get the ability to interact and query bits I’m not following. That, is not so often because I’m not asking it complex integrals, just needing a memory refresh on “basic” things, like above; or what is the integral of

Whilst playing around I have seen it spit out some questionable results – I check against google searching too; as well as my own intuition and failing memory!

It always pays to check what it tells you against your intuition and other sources. This is nothing new to me! At one point, some 30+ years ago during my A level maths exam, I found my calculator was giving an answer >1 for the sin of some input. That I knew to be incorrect! So I had to figure out myself, in the middle of the exam, how to use the old fashioned log book that was provided on everyone’s desk. That was fun!

We’ve come along way since the days of allowing calculators into exams!

I am also ever conscious not to ask it to solve my detailed assignment questions (although that’s something I really want to do once I’ve submitted, to see what it does!). For one, that would not be my work; and I do agree with a comment the course director gave that by doing things yourself you learn. I just recognise that I’m sometimes going to need extra explanations on my rusty maths aspects I’ve not used for 30+ years!