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Comment by julianh65 | Hacker News Reader

I'm going to give this a go, I've been self studying linear algebra, and there are certain questions that I can't seem to find good answers or explanations to online that ChatGPT or Claude cannot answer sufficiently. The one concern I have with this, is the async nature of it. One of the reasons I like using ChatGPT or Claude (or a real human if I can find one) to learn is because I can ask clarifying questions and try to relate what they're saying in real time to another concept I'm familiar with. Curious to try it out but I think that an important part of making the videos good is that the student / learning needs to provide a good prompt so that the response can be customized to directly address their area of confusion.

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Ah I see why you'd want realtime interaction. In earlier versions there used to be voice chat, so when the learner-and-teacher happen to both be free, you'd talk in real-time. It was removed to focus on the async video aspect, but hearing what you said puts that back in my radar...

When you mention "good prompts", is that in the context of AI, or with asking questions in general? Is it easy/hard to create good prompts from your past experience?

As for Linear Algebra, I noticed you didn't sign up - did something change your mind? Feel free to be brutally honest as it helps me make real progress! If it's easier, feel free to call +1 503 250 3868 (Tokyo time zone), or email eltonlin@alum.mit.edu anytime!

Appreciate you following up! I plan to sign up over the weekend which is normally when I do my longer blocks of studying and have more questions. I think that what I mean is that sometimes if I ask for an explanation about a topic or question, I don't get the magical answer that answers my question after my initial prompt. That is to say, I typically need to ask 5-6 clarifying questions to an LLM to get the explanation that makes it click for me. This can be by asking for more examples, asking it to clarify certain points, fitting an example to another topic I know, etc... I think that while I was talking about it in the context of LLM tutors, the same logic also applies for human tutors as well. It's very hard for me to precisely formulate a question in one-shot that will get the right answer as you don't know what you don't know. And the reason I'm asking LLMs or a human in general is because I can't find a good explanation on the internet as it's typically something very niche or precise. Which is why I think it's good to have a back and forth.

Ah, so since you usually need to ask 5-6 clarifying questions, you'd rather it be done in short bursts synchronously!

Right now with explanations.app, you can only follow-up with comments OR by posting new questions - asynchronously. I see that this might be a problem.

I look forward to you trying it this weekend :^) so I can also hear about your usage experience before deciding on the best way to solve this sync./async. trade-off

(perhaps the naive solution is voice chat - you post a question, your teacher happens to be free, you happen to be free, you just talk quickly back & forth)

Hi - math student here too. Have you asked any image AIs for graphical representations of these Linear Algebra problems? How did those attempts go?

Asking because visualizing the problem scenarios was something that did not come right away for me, and I had to spend a lot of time in the tutoring center to build it. I believe the right prompt might yield the right thing.

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