PhotoMath Solves Math Problems via Video
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Now this is a pretty cool technology. A new application for your smart phone that turns on the video camera, looks for math problems and solves them for you as soon as it sees them. It's the next generation of the calculator. You don't even need to type in the numbers anymore and it does more than basic math, it solves equations. Check out Gizmodo's writeup on PhotoMath.
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Samsung has an app where you can hand write equations into the phone and it will convert them to text and solve them. My friend showed it to me on the Note 4.
Not sure if it's limited to that phone. -
Saw this on Facebook. Pretty cool.
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Pretty soon we're going to have something like 100 people who know how to make things like this and everyone else who can't even solve simple math problems. Talk about class separation.
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I love this! I could use this all the time!
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@Minion-Queen Just make sure you use printed math problems. I'm sure it can't read your handwriting.
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@art_of_shred said:
Pretty soon we're going to have something like 100 people who know how to make things like this and everyone else who can't even solve simple math problems. Talk about class separation.
And that is different than before.... how?
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There are still some of us left who know how to do math without that gizmo.
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@art_of_shred said:
There are still some of us left who know how to do math without that gizmo.
And those of us who are would probably still exist even with it.
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Just now tested it. It states that it does not work with handwriting and has quite the issue reading off of a screen, so pretty much it will only work with printed text. Also, it does not really do the reduce thing too well. I pointed it at a sample problem of 2^30+2^30+2^30+2^30= ? and it gave me a whole number instead of a simplified version of the equation, which would be x^y.
It is pretty fancy, but also figure that the only people who will use it are students looking for answers in the book, and for a question like the one I posed above it will not give you the answer you are looking for. So, while this looks shiny, it does not work as well as it sounds and still has a long ways to go before automating the resolution of common textbook math problems.
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Don't show this to @NetworkNerd . He'll pull out his soapbox.
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I don't see too much case for solving hand written equations of that nature. I suspect that that will be something that they will solve in the future, that's purely just optical detection issues. But the majority of use cases must be printed ones. When someone wants to check work (or skip doing it) but as this does not show the process of finding the answers it really does not do peoples' work for them but just provides a fast way to verify the work.
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@scottalanmiller said:
I don't see too much case for solving hand written equations of that nature. I suspect that that will be something that they will solve in the future, that's purely just optical detection issues. But the majority of use cases must be printed ones. When someone wants to check work (or skip doing it) but as this does not show the process of finding the answers it really does not do peoples' work for them but just provides a fast way to verify the work.
It makes me wonder how many folks will try to smuggle these into standardized testing environments. Of course, that probably happens now to some extent.
That just goes to show it is extremely important when teaching problem solving to make students show the work that led to the answer(s).
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@NetworkNerdWifey said:
Don't show this to @NetworkNerd . He'll pull out his soapbox.
I'm already standing on it.
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@art_of_shred said:
There are still some of us left who know how to do math without that gizmo.
Amen to that, sir.
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@scottalanmiller Yeah, it does math the way I do it; all in my head. Cost me a 100 on a regents once, cause I "didn't show enough work". Nothing like getting penalized for being too efficient. It takes too long to write all that crap down.
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@art_of_shred said:
@scottalanmiller Yeah, it does math the way I do it; all in my head. Cost me a 100 on a regents once, cause I "didn't show enough work". Nothing like getting penalized for being too efficient. It takes too long to write all that crap down.
I know, math teachers try to get you to learn math and then penalize you for having learned it. Makes no sense.
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As the husband of a math teacher - The whole point of showing work is three fold:
1 - you're not cheating
2 - If you make a mistake, the teacher can see where you made it and try to help you
3 - See that you are actually learning/doing a process which becomes more important the further down the road you get. -
@Dashrender said:
As the husband of a math teacher - The whole point of showing work is three fold:
1 - you're not cheating
2 - If you make a mistake, the teacher can see where you made it and try to help you
3 - See that you are actually learning/doing a process which becomes more important the further down the road you get.1 - This only helps catch that a little, and cheating really only hurts the cheater. This is like refusing to help someone out of a well with rope because you fear that they will hang themselves. What other class cares about the journey and not the destination? English class doesn't make you "build up sentences" to prove you didn't copy them.
2 - True, but this doesn't explain punishment for not doing it. It's the opposite, in fact.
3 - I don't buy this one. If you can do the work with fewer steps and find it intuitive you are in better shape. Showing rudimentary work once the problems are trivial makes no sense unless your goal is so slow people down because they are too far ahead.
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There is a reason why it's the "normal" class work that tends to require this stuff and not the competitive math stuff, the stuff that really gets you into colleges and gets scholarships. Punishing the good students in the hopes of helping the middling students is bad practice. It's "no child left behind" which is just the nice marketing speak for "no child gets ahead."