13 ms·

I am 53 and cramming while relearning linear algebra, statistics, and calculus, after a 30 year break from college, in preparation for my first semester at GA

by jsqu99 2y ago

I am 53 and cramming while relearning linear algebra, statistics, and calculus, after a 30 year break from college, in preparation for my first semester at GA Tech's online MS CS program in the fall. I love this! But...before I check it out, I'm going to be surprised if it competes with the already-incredible free help i've gotten from chatgpt-3.5. Recently I asked it the following (where it made a mistake that confused me!), but i followed up w/ a question about it, and it corrected the mistake and re-answered the question, all with no wait at all, and free: ```Given a new 3x3 matrix A having columns (4,2,2), (-1,1,-1), and (6,6,8) and an eigenvalue of 2, help me find a basis for the corresponding eigenspace. Also, given that I is the 3x3 identity matrix, why does the equation (A - 2I)x = 0 having free variables make it obvious that 2 is indeed an eigenvalue.``` I'm still going to check out your site, and I do wish you well, but i'm curious how it will stack up against AI tutors.

srameshc 2y ago
This is inspiring. I would love to learn math and CS again but I don't know if I have the courage to enroll in college again.
triyambakam 2y ago
Why a MS after 30 years? No negativity meant, just curious
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  I'm 42 and I'd be up for doing something like this. I wasn't interested in the maths side of my CS degree when I was 18, but I now am.
- jsqu99 2y ago
  totally valid question. tbh, i think i need my head examined :-) the main points here are: 1) i've been pulling things out of DBs and putting them on web pages for 30 years, and along comes these breakthroughs in AI which...my apologies to the naysayers...i'm just blown away by what i'm witnessing, and i just _must_ learn more about how this works. 2) discovering the OMSCS program was an a-ha moment for me: it's prestigious, inexpensive, and I don't have to jump through a lot of hoops (GRE) to enroll. It only cost me < 1 hour and < $100 to apply. 3) There's no pressure on me to complete the program. I can do it one course at a time, and as long as i'm getting something out of it, i will continue. Each class is...$600-$700 or something like that. I fully am ok w/ stopping if it takes too much of a personal / marital toll on me. 4) My imposter syndrome is pretty terrible right now...part of me wants to know if i've 'still got it' (i did really well at U of MD CS). 5) I loved the Rodney Dangerfield movie "Back to School" :-) EDIT: 6) Also i wouldn't mind converting to the MLE role at some point. EDIT 2: I blame Paolo Perrotta for writing such an inspiring book (https://www.progml.com/ https://www.progml.com/) that ruined my cruise in september (kept rereading the book at the pool) and starting me on this path ;-)
  - wwarner 2y ago
    You still have it, you chose learning.
mentos 2y ago
You should try ChatGPT4 out too it might have succeeded where 3.5 failed
jhanschoo 2y ago
As a counterpoint I've been studying for leisure by doing exercises in math textbooks, and with advanced undergrad/grad topics my experience with ChatGPT and Gemini is that they fail miserably where they try basic proof techniques that they think work but don't. Trying to marshal their help is a puzzle in figuring out where they made leaps in logic, pointing those out, to exhaustion until they acknowledge their lack of ability and give up. It's really reminiscent of talking to overconfident and eager to please youth not realizing that they are tackling something beyond their ability.
- jsqu99 2y ago
  yeah my approach so far has been: try 3.5 until i am disappointed in the results (hasn't failed me yet), once it does, pay for the upgraded version and see how that goes (totally will to, but 3.5 has really been great so far, and i was blown away when i asked about 1 equation that didn't seem right, and it did realize it's mistake and corrected it...i don't know...just seems more than adequate so far. i realize it's not perfect...i just haven't been let down sufficiently yet).
- humansareok1 2y ago
  It's a mistake to try to get these models to do math. Unless you explicitly have them solve problems in code they aren't going to work, they literally don't have the capability. They are usually ok to explain concepts though.
SuperHeavy256 2y ago
I wish there was a Discord community of people who are teaching themselves Mathematics with the help of books, videos, etc.
- fn-mote 2y ago
  A sea of non-experts is only helpful for learning if you are further behind on the trail and have obvious questions. That said, a community is good for other things. And many times the issues people have are "obvious" questions.
- elpatokamo 2y ago
  There is a Discord server for the OSSU computer science cirriculum that is pretty active. https://github.com/ossu/computer-science https://github.com/ossu/computer-science It's not strictly mathematics, but obviously there are a number of mathematics courses in the cirriculum.
- ykonstant 2y ago
  There are many such people in the biggest math Discord server: https://discord.com/channels/268882317391429632/525440994242461702 https://discord.com/channels/268882317391429632/525440994242...
ants_everywhere 2y ago
The failure mode I've seen with ChatGPT in technical things is it's right often enough that when it's wrong it's hard for you to catch unless you know more than it does. I guess that's true of teachers sometimes as well, but it's easier to rely habitually on ChatGPT's judgment. For linear algebra specifically, the software tools like Matlab, Octave, Sage, and R are so good that they can answer a lot of your questions. You can even ask ChatGPT e.g. "3x3 matrix A having columns (4,2,2), (-1,1,-1), and (6,6,8) and an eigenvalue of 2, print a GNU octave command to find the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of A."
PheonixPharts 2y ago
As someone who has used linear algebra, statistics and calculus as part of my day-to-day work for years, I would be very cautious of relying on ChatGPT as your "tutor". Occasionally I've tried to substitute ChatGPT for the shelf of reference books in my office and nearly always had poor results. The trouble is that the outputs of these models, by their very nature, look convincing. Even as an expert it takes a fair bit of background to realize when ChatGPT is making a mistake. The results virtually always look good at first pass. I would strongly recommend sticking to text books for self study.
- ebuck 2y ago
  Yes. This. The primary problem with using ChatGPT in mathematics is that by the time you can classify a ChatGPT answer as right or wrong, you are already more than capable of solving the answer independently. So, for this field, ChatGPT is like having a research assistant that assists you, but one that occasionally gets frustrated, and tries to destroy your project from within by reporting good looking, but completely inaccurate information. You can't trust their work, and the validation of their work basically means that you'll have to do their work again by other means. A faster and more accurate approach would be just to do the work without the subterfuge of an unreliable assistant. At least then, you are only subject to your own errors (which would still be present in validation of ChatGPT) and not subject to your own errors and those that ChatGPT induces.
- tootie 2y ago
  Can I jump in and ask what you do? My oldest kid has those courses lined up for her next few years because she really enjoys math. I studied some of them in college and then ended up spending 20 years making web sites.
- zozbot234 2y ago
  Yup, ChatGPT is not just a parrot but a master troll. It's purposely designed to give you a convincing answer, but there's nothing to ensure that it will be correct. And it will promptly say "actually I can't answer that question" when you ask it something it doesn't like for 'ethical' reasons, but it won't do that in any other circumstance; instead, it will just make stuff up. You have to explicitly say "please don't answer if you aren't sure it's right" and even then obviously it doesn't always work.
gfodor 2y ago
Stop whatever you're doing right now and go sign up for $20/mo at claude.ai and use Claude Opus. There's something like 20 or 30 IQ points you can add to your experience by just doing this simple step.
- copperx 2y ago
  Why not ChatGPT 4?
  - gfodor 2y ago
    Claude's better.
bibliotekka 2y ago
This is the most inspiring thing I've heard today!
- jsqu99 2y ago
  ha! glad i can put a smile on you young whippersnappers faces :-). Man, your whole life you are called a young man over and over again, and then you stop getting called that, and then you find yourself boasting about how much hair you have, then your wife takes a picture of the top of your head (seriously) to prove to you that you no longer had hair up there ( i swear you never get to see the top of your head )...and then...you still don't give up and you enroll in a masters program!!!! :-)
prudentpomelo 2y ago
I am in a similar boat. Starting a masters in cs in the fall. What resources are you using to study? I have neem doing some refreshing on Khan Academy but looking for other options.
- jsqu99 2y ago
  i've been all over the place. khan academy was really good for calculus, but man, the linear algebra lectures are really long, w/ no quizzes to keep you practicing. Have read parts of multiple textbooks. Have watched 3blue1brown's excellent series. I've gotten stuck a lot and keep looking for one resource that's 'got it all', but haven't yet found it.
eltonlin 2y ago
Sounds great - I'm a huge fan of Georgia Tech's online masters. As for AI, I think if it solves all your problems, great. And it's real-time, and free. But! The reason I still work on explanations.app is that, I often struggle not with "facts" but with the "fundamental way of thinking". How do the great mathematicians think about matrices, do they just see them as numbers on grids, as vectors, as transformations, how do you you think in the first place, how do you approach the problem, that kind of stuff is what I struggle with the most. And that's very hard to articulate too as a specific query, which is why Youtubers like 3B1B are so amazing - there are so many hidden choices they had to make to frame their explanations in certain ways and in certain narratives. Anyway you can always let me know if you want to try out explanations.app : ) best of luck

by jsqu99 2y ago

srameshc 2y ago

This is inspiring. I would love to learn math and CS again but I don't know if I have the courage to enroll in college again.

triyambakam 2y ago

Why a MS after 30 years? No negativity meant, just curious

robertlagrant 2y ago
I'm 42 and I'd be up for doing something like this. I wasn't interested in the maths side of my CS degree when I was 18, but I now am.
jsqu99 2y ago
totally valid question. tbh, i think i need my head examined :-) the main points here are: 1) i've been pulling things out of DBs and putting them on web pages for 30 years, and along comes these breakthroughs in AI which...my apologies to the naysayers...i'm just blown away by what i'm witnessing, and i just _must_ learn more about how this works. 2) discovering the OMSCS program was an a-ha moment for me: it's prestigious, inexpensive, and I don't have to jump through a lot of hoops (GRE) to enroll. It only cost me < 1 hour and < $100 to apply. 3) There's no pressure on me to complete the program. I can do it one course at a time, and as long as i'm getting something out of it, i will continue. Each class is...$600-$700 or something like that. I fully am ok w/ stopping if it takes too much of a personal / marital toll on me. 4) My imposter syndrome is pretty terrible right now...part of me wants to know if i've 'still got it' (i did really well at U of MD CS). 5) I loved the Rodney Dangerfield movie "Back to School" :-) EDIT: 6) Also i wouldn't mind converting to the MLE role at some point. EDIT 2: I blame Paolo Perrotta for writing such an inspiring book (https://www.progml.com/ https://www.progml.com/) that ruined my cruise in september (kept rereading the book at the pool) and starting me on this path ;-)
- wwarner 2y ago
  You still have it, you chose learning.

mentos 2y ago

You should try ChatGPT4 out too it might have succeeded where 3.5 failed

jhanschoo 2y ago

As a counterpoint I've been studying for leisure by doing exercises in math textbooks, and with advanced undergrad/grad topics my experience with ChatGPT and Gemini is that they fail miserably where they try basic proof techniques that they think work but don't. Trying to marshal their help is a puzzle in figuring out where they made leaps in logic, pointing those out, to exhaustion until they acknowledge their lack of ability and give up. It's really reminiscent of talking to overconfident and eager to please youth not realizing that they are tackling something beyond their ability.

jsqu99 2y ago
yeah my approach so far has been: try 3.5 until i am disappointed in the results (hasn't failed me yet), once it does, pay for the upgraded version and see how that goes (totally will to, but 3.5 has really been great so far, and i was blown away when i asked about 1 equation that didn't seem right, and it did realize it's mistake and corrected it...i don't know...just seems more than adequate so far. i realize it's not perfect...i just haven't been let down sufficiently yet).
humansareok1 2y ago
It's a mistake to try to get these models to do math. Unless you explicitly have them solve problems in code they aren't going to work, they literally don't have the capability. They are usually ok to explain concepts though.

SuperHeavy256 2y ago

I wish there was a Discord community of people who are teaching themselves Mathematics with the help of books, videos, etc.

fn-mote 2y ago
A sea of non-experts is only helpful for learning if you are further behind on the trail and have obvious questions. That said, a community is good for other things. And many times the issues people have are "obvious" questions.
elpatokamo 2y ago
There is a Discord server for the OSSU computer science cirriculum that is pretty active. https://github.com/ossu/computer-science https://github.com/ossu/computer-science It's not strictly mathematics, but obviously there are a number of mathematics courses in the cirriculum.
ykonstant 2y ago
There are many such people in the biggest math Discord server: https://discord.com/channels/268882317391429632/525440994242461702 https://discord.com/channels/268882317391429632/525440994242...

ants_everywhere 2y ago

The failure mode I've seen with ChatGPT in technical things is it's right often enough that when it's wrong it's hard for you to catch unless you know more than it does. I guess that's true of teachers sometimes as well, but it's easier to rely habitually on ChatGPT's judgment. For linear algebra specifically, the software tools like Matlab, Octave, Sage, and R are so good that they can answer a lot of your questions. You can even ask ChatGPT e.g. "3x3 matrix A having columns (4,2,2), (-1,1,-1), and (6,6,8) and an eigenvalue of 2, print a GNU octave command to find the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of A."

PheonixPharts 2y ago

As someone who has used linear algebra, statistics and calculus as part of my day-to-day work for years, I would be very cautious of relying on ChatGPT as your "tutor". Occasionally I've tried to substitute ChatGPT for the shelf of reference books in my office and nearly always had poor results. The trouble is that the outputs of these models, by their very nature, look convincing. Even as an expert it takes a fair bit of background to realize when ChatGPT is making a mistake. The results virtually always look good at first pass. I would strongly recommend sticking to text books for self study.

ebuck 2y ago
Yes. This. The primary problem with using ChatGPT in mathematics is that by the time you can classify a ChatGPT answer as right or wrong, you are already more than capable of solving the answer independently. So, for this field, ChatGPT is like having a research assistant that assists you, but one that occasionally gets frustrated, and tries to destroy your project from within by reporting good looking, but completely inaccurate information. You can't trust their work, and the validation of their work basically means that you'll have to do their work again by other means. A faster and more accurate approach would be just to do the work without the subterfuge of an unreliable assistant. At least then, you are only subject to your own errors (which would still be present in validation of ChatGPT) and not subject to your own errors and those that ChatGPT induces.
tootie 2y ago
Can I jump in and ask what you do? My oldest kid has those courses lined up for her next few years because she really enjoys math. I studied some of them in college and then ended up spending 20 years making web sites.
zozbot234 2y ago
Yup, ChatGPT is not just a parrot but a master troll. It's purposely designed to give you a convincing answer, but there's nothing to ensure that it will be correct. And it will promptly say "actually I can't answer that question" when you ask it something it doesn't like for 'ethical' reasons, but it won't do that in any other circumstance; instead, it will just make stuff up. You have to explicitly say "please don't answer if you aren't sure it's right" and even then obviously it doesn't always work.

gfodor 2y ago

Stop whatever you're doing right now and go sign up for $20/mo at claude.ai and use Claude Opus. There's something like 20 or 30 IQ points you can add to your experience by just doing this simple step.

copperx 2y ago
Why not ChatGPT 4?
- gfodor 2y ago
  Claude's better.

bibliotekka 2y ago

This is the most inspiring thing I've heard today!

jsqu99 2y ago
ha! glad i can put a smile on you young whippersnappers faces :-). Man, your whole life you are called a young man over and over again, and then you stop getting called that, and then you find yourself boasting about how much hair you have, then your wife takes a picture of the top of your head (seriously) to prove to you that you no longer had hair up there ( i swear you never get to see the top of your head )...and then...you still don't give up and you enroll in a masters program!!!! :-)

prudentpomelo 2y ago

I am in a similar boat. Starting a masters in cs in the fall. What resources are you using to study? I have neem doing some refreshing on Khan Academy but looking for other options.

jsqu99 2y ago
i've been all over the place. khan academy was really good for calculus, but man, the linear algebra lectures are really long, w/ no quizzes to keep you practicing. Have read parts of multiple textbooks. Have watched 3blue1brown's excellent series. I've gotten stuck a lot and keep looking for one resource that's 'got it all', but haven't yet found it.

eltonlin 2y ago

Sounds great - I'm a huge fan of Georgia Tech's online masters. As for AI, I think if it solves all your problems, great. And it's real-time, and free. But! The reason I still work on explanations.app is that, I often struggle not with "facts" but with the "fundamental way of thinking". How do the great mathematicians think about matrices, do they just see them as numbers on grids, as vectors, as transformations, how do you you think in the first place, how do you approach the problem, that kind of stuff is what I struggle with the most. And that's very hard to articulate too as a specific query, which is why Youtubers like 3B1B are so amazing - there are so many hidden choices they had to make to frame their explanations in certain ways and in certain narratives. Anyway you can always let me know if you want to try out explanations.app : ) best of luck