When I use a calculator, I atleast try to get with in a few digits of what I think the anwser is in my head. Mostly since when I was younger I had a very passionate teacher about how much slower everyone is now because of calculators on simple math. I just apply the same thing with LLMs, just try and think of how and what I would have said and see how close I was. Only thing I change is I don't trust the anwsers and accept some nuance in the given context. It's a double edge sword because then I crash out over it more than if I don't. When it over and under explaining the wrong sections or when it gets to an objectively terrible solution that technically anwsers the question. It feels like a student trying to get brownie points and/or give fluffed anwsers for the sake of not leaving anything blank on a test.

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helterskelter 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

OT, but if we made kids learning math use log tables and slide rules for all their calculations I expect that they would engage their brains more and actually think about what they were doing, ie: form a strategy to solve a problem before they started calculating. Also I think that they would get a better "feel" for working numbers in general. I have no evidence, but I suspect that by abstracting away a lot of the "gruntwork" of calculating, we've really hampered people's development in math.

Unfortunately this adds quite a bit of overhead and would make everything take a lot more time. It might be worth it though.

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saulpw 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm working on this! https://magworld.pw

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smoothbraindev 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is really cool! After entering the software field, I felt uncomfortable not having a sense of relative size while working with digital storage units. Piece of mind was achieved after sitting down and mapping the units (Gb, Mb, etc) to common artifacts(audio file, plain text, database).

I've been planning forever to do something similar with length, duration, power, etc.

	▲	saulpw 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's basically what we're doing! I'd be curious if it helps you. Send me an email if you wind up listening to or reading anything from the site.

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helterskelter 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Looks interesting, I'll give this a listen and a read. :)

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Izkata 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Also I think that they would get a better "feel" for working numbers in general.

This is called "number sense". I'm pretty sure we do have evidence under searches for that term, it was well-enough known as a concept when I was in school decades ago and is the reason we don't use calculators when first learning math.

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contextfree 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah, I've always tried to train myself to do calculations in my head as much as reasonably possible when learning about mathematical objects, etc. Like when I was learning linear algebra I made myself invert 4x4 matrices in my head. (Pen and paper is also cheating!) Calculators and computers have been better than me at this sort of thing for my entire life, so in some sense this isn't a change?

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rokhayakebe 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We had Mental Math sessions in class. The goal was to teach you how to do math without pen/paper, calculators were not even an option. I try to teach some of this to my 6 y o.

	▲	lelanthran 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> The goal was to teach you how to do math without pen/paper, calculators were not even an option. I try to teach some of this to my 6 y o. It works quite well. I do the math lessons during bath-time daily with my 6 yo. He's up to the point were he can add multiply pretty much any number by 2, 3 or 4 as long as the product is under 3 digits. Going from adding single digits to multiplication of random 2-digit numbers by 4 with lessons only during bath-time (no paper or whiteboard) gives a child a great deal of confidence with numbers.

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techpression 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The calculator comparisons are truly meaningless imo, a calculator does nothing if you don’t know how to use it and what to input, an LLM circumvents all that, but a lot of people seem to think it’s the same.

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AnEro 3 hours ago | parent [-]

It’s not a perfect analogy. I’m approaching it from perspective of a more universal experience of people losing aspects of a skill over time by using a tool. When ultimately the skill learned with out it allows them to use the tool much better

	▲	techpression 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ah yes, I very much agree on that framing.