Let Live Search Do Your Algebra

When they can compute a triple integral, graph it in 3D and give me the volume. I'll be impressed with this. Cheating on algebra is for chumps. Just learn it, it's not hard and is something that you can use forever. I hate to say it but I use algebra every day, and not just on my Calculus HW.

eagles3

@[search.live.com] works for me

How come it doesn't work on my Firefox :(

@YeiPera: wow, just checked out the site. That'll be invaluable!

Interesting, although it's *very* simple to implement in code.

What'd be really cool would be the ability to give limits for linear programming problems, or better yet to rewrite equations in terms of $SOME_LETTER.

@superbryant: Showing work just got that much more important.

@superbryant: whatevs, man. TI-89 Titanium FTW!

mathway.com

YeiPera

That's pretty awesome. Well done live search, you did something new :D

This is cool! In IE8, you can type it in the search box and select the live search button to get the answer right away. I just tried a quadratic equation and it gave me both possible values of the variable. Good stuff.

puntai

If those just learning it use this for their homework, they won't learn how to do it for themselves and won't be able to do higher-level math until they can...

wow a generation of kids who will get A's on their homework and fail all there test..... Woo Hoo

This is pretty cool though. It's nice to see new unique ways to use search engines

superbryant

Pretty cool

ADiSH

@Tony Bullard: I own a full service tutoring center and this is already happening. Kids don't show the work, barely doing the homework, have no clue what's going on and are surprised when they fail a test. Pisses me off. I am constantly saying, you have to actually KNOW what's going on. Not just turn in something.

ospreyguy

Wow, this is awesome.

It even solves quadratics for all values :D

Way to go Microsoft!

BrianB

"putting a Live Search option in their search options or as an AwesomeBar keyword"

How do I do this - in Firefox?

@Tony Bullard: Dude I used to think the same thing until I got to calculus and my engineering classes because now we aren't allowed to use calculators on anything

superbryant

Doesn't work for all languages. I just switched from Denmark to USA; then it worked.

@Ti-NSpire

Richard Pearson

@WikzoDk: Which one?

A. "search option":
1. Click the dropdown arrow on your search box.
2. Choose "Manage search engines...".
3. Click on the "Get more search engines" link.
(alternatively, you could just go here.
4. Add the Live.com search engine to Firefox.

B. AwesomeBar keyword:
1. Bookmark the following [search.live.com]
2. Right-click on the bookmark, choose "Properties"
3. Enter a keyword in the "keyword" box.
4. Go to the AwesomeBar, type your keyword, a space, and your query.

Thats kinda neat but I think its just a gimmick. If anything it would be cool to see it show how the problem was solved, not just the answer. Now that would be a nice feature of a search engine.

YatimaMeiji

@superbryant: Yeah, fail "there" tests. cough cough. All they need to do is plug the equations into a matrix and do some reduction. No sweat.

rtac5b

i fear for the future, like stated above, showing your work is all of a sudden more important. but this isn't even close to the end.

using wikipedia to compose papers is easy if you know how to re-write and maintain content, even easier if you follow discussions, plus there's a discussion and analysis board out there for everything. it's kinda like rule 34 for non-porn.

in my classes i feel like it's cheating that they have to teach to the lowest common deniminator, but i'll take it!

mfusion

@mfusion: I feel a bit sorry for those that use such easy resources for their work. Its fine in freshmen level courses where answers are readily available. Its when they move up to the higher level courses and find that the must do some real thinking to find the answer are going to be in for a shock.

YatimaMeiji

@superbryant: Too bad Live Search doesn't teach fundamentals of English spelling and grammar.

DangerousLiberal

@ all the math zealots: Someone using a computational tool to solve basic equations doesn't make them cheats, there are many mathematically educated people who would see this as a tool to make their problem solving simpler. I find it necessary to solve linear equations and quadratics often in many engineering problems. Often the algebra and calculus are the trivial aspects of finding the solution to a much harder problem. Math is just a tool. If using a computational tool to eliminate one aspect of the task is advantageous then it seems prudent to use it. Do you think real scientists and engineers do all their computations by hand? No, of course not. If they did they'd spend all day solving systems of differential equations and other similar problems instead of creating new technology. This isn't specific to the live searches ability to solve equations, but rather the ignorant mindset that computational tools are "cheating". On a note more in line with the original post: It appears live search can't solve quadratics with complex roots. It seems pretty trivial since it's unable to solve a large subset of polynomials.

CarmenAchilles

Bad ! It can't solve polynomial equations.

QuonLobster

Google has done math in its search field for as long as I know.

FlemingCrazy

I think it calculates up to 3 answers.

(x-1)(x-2) : x=2, x=1

x^2-3x+2=0 : x=2, x=1

(x-1)(x-2)(x-3)=0 : x=3, x=2, x=1

x^3-6x^2+11x-3=3 : x=3, x=2, x=1

(x-1)(x-2)(x-3)(x-4)=0 : fail

theDtTvB

@superbryant: Kids have copied each others work for years and used calculators at home when they couldn't on tests. Lots of things to get high marks on homework and terrible marks when actually tested. This isn't going to make a difference in that sense ;)

I think its neat, and if I were just learning algebra right now it would be a decent answer checking tool if nothing else.

sigmaforce

Google has a calculator with built in units conversion. Paste the following into Google and see what you get...

1 pound per pint / 32.5 miles per gallon in dollars per kilometer

[www.google.com.au]

Now try this one...

A train leaves Chicago at 8:30 in the morning headed east at 50 miles per hour...

I guess it's a shame Fermet didn't have IE Live Search way back in the day.

@superbryant:

Here's how teaching is suppose to go...

I present to you how to do something.
You show me how well you can do it.
I see that you understand or struggle with.
I refine what I do to help you where you are struggling.
You practice.
I see that you understand or struggle with.
We move forward or I remediate.
You practice.
I see that you understand or struggle with.
We move forward or I remediate.

Not until I know where you are in your understanding do I give you homework and when I do, that homework should allow you to practice what you understand, even enrich it, but it should not be an attempt to get you to do on your own what I have seen you cannot do.

Point?

There are students who understand how to do things but are lazy so look for shortcuts like these. Easy to combat..."Show all your work".

There are students who won't understand how to do it and use something like this to try to mask it. Well, the good teacher won't put them in position to "need" to do that, and if it is done, they will catch it before it's time to fail a test.

This isn't a tool for the learner. It's more a tool for the person who never did learn. No matter how good the teacher, you don't reach them all.

jupiterthunder

Wow, that's great. As if kids aren't lazy enough these days.

hpiguy

@FlemingCrazy: Google, sadly, doesn't do algebra. I've been hoping they'd implement it ever since I found out about google's calculator. Maybe live search finally getting one decent function will convince the google guys to add algebra >_>

protospork

@mfusion:

using wikipedia to compose paper

No self-respecting student should be doing that. No self-respecting educator should be accepting it as a source.

Here's the rule for my students. Feel free to use Wikipedia as an intial resource, but if you intend to use information found there, you need to verify it in a more reliable source and cite that source instead.

Wikipedia is a great tool, and there are plenty of folks that contribute knowledgeable, factual info, but there are also the elephants are no longer endanger because I just put it wikipedia so it has to be true folks.

[www.colbertnation.com]

Colbert. Funny, but true.

jupiterthunder

@YatimaMeiji: Adding shown work escalates it from "I need a quick answer" to "Hey Microsoft, help me cheat on my homework"

protospork

@protospork: Heh true. FWI I am a math major and it was a godsend to have that solutions manual, not because it simply had the answers, but because it showed what was going on step by step. There are some problems where some mental acrobatics are needed and not readily obvious. But we are talking about arithmetic here and what students should be learning is how to follow a process.

Real math is proving theorems and I've learned that as long as you have a process, building a solution from whats given is work, but can be done. Memorization helps, but doesn't give true understanding. And that is what a good education is about.

YatimaMeiji

@dchall8: Yeah, but how many rods to the hogshead does my car get?

Urgh, it's called double checking your answers. My math books always had solutions to the odd numbered problems in the back of the book, so you can check your answers to see if you're on the right track. This is the same as having your parents check your homework.

@hpiguy: Sounds like you're too lazy to motivate them

orlo

@YatimaMeiji: It probably does a guess and check method.

Can't google do it. I know they can do simple math - TEST COMMENCING - FAIL (live search gets this one)

Witherslick

It can even do quadratic equations. Not bad..

It does have its patches: for example, it solves some quintics but not others: x^5-32=0 gives x=2 but x^5+x-34=0 doesn't give any solutions. In addition it works for sin x=0 and cos x=0 (but it should give the solution as Pi/2 instead of 1.57... :D). I wonder what algo it's using to solve equations; still pretty cool in its own right.

Nathaniel Dean

Wolfram, the publishers of Mathematica software, have an online integrator. http://integrals.wolfram.com/index.jsp Caution: it just spits out the answer, not the steps needed to reach the answer, so it's better for checking your homework than for cheating on it.

GuidoGaloodle

@WhiteGuyOnWebCam_GitEmSteveDave: It's a shame nobody knows who Fermet really is. Just who is this mystery man, Fermet? A question that will forever remain unanswered.

nortexoid

@[lafacroft.com]

chipmunk884

@YeiPera:

Or quickmath.com.

Robert112

@superbryant:

Seriously? or do you mean GRAPHING calculators?? Most of my math courses wont allow graphing calculators, but engineering classes are ok..

anyway, maple ftw!

Anonymous816435

I've been wondering what homework is like with Google searches. I wish I could have Googled some of my calculus problems back in high school.

@superbryant: And you're talking about a generation that fails "there" tests? :P I think you mean "Their".

Note: I'm a junior in High School :P

Nice! Now to get using this in class...

@Jakooboo: No, my mathematica install on my compy can kill your Ti-89. :D

x=1 : x=1

It works!

tonalanswer

@jupiterthunder: oh, i never use wikipedia as a source. and if you were to search my history here you'd see that i actually laugh at people who rely on wikipedia as a source. many times.

it's like when i meet someone who either says that they're either in human resources or majoring in it, i almost can't help myself from laughing right in their face

mfusion

@Tony Bullard: ALL of my HS math textbooks had the answers printed in the back of the book for checking, if you just wrote down the answer in any of the classes I took you didn't get credit. I always hated math homework the most too, was usually simplest to get some friends together and each do the work on an even share of the problems, then copy each others work out to save time. I'm sure the teacher knew, she just didn't care since we were all doing very well on the tests anyway.

vlakner

My go-to resource for solving equations: Mathematica. Suck it, Live Search!

Kuciwalker

@Luke Faraone: The latest stable one... And I clicked your link, it doesn't work. Here's the url:

[farm4.static.flickr.com]

@superbryant: I don't know. Maybe in most cases that will be true, but I remember growing up algebraic equations was difficult subject for me and the teacher's plain method of giving you worksheets to drill you didn't work cause you did not know what you were doing in the first place. I imagine now, kids will get the answer to a problem which otherwise they would never in their whole lifetimes get the answer to, and then be able to find out how that answer came to be (working backwards).

Gilbert Capulong

@runiteking1: my matlab is better than your mathematica anyway :)

dhlt25

@vlakner: My classes don't even check homework, it's just voluntary and everything's based off the tests

@superbryant: It's just a tool to make it quicker, if used right. I mean, you could say the same thing about a basic calculator. If you're in an algebra course, you're not going to be multiplying the numbers by hand. OMG, a whole generation of kids who don't know how to multiply!
No, if you know the fundamental methods, you don't need to do it everytime.

@Phoshi: Seriously

Bah, faster to solve by hand than to type it in. Call me when it solves second order PDEs.

CWW

@Jacobm001: yeah yeah guys I didn't even realize the mistake. I feel really stupid now... Woo Hoo!

superbryant

@Izkata: You're right! To hell with furthering microsoft's services! Down with live search! Ever since it could solve math it's just been a horrible thing to this world!

@DreadedKilla: The Chinese government doesn't want you to learn math.

Moonshadow101

@Izkata: You've obviously never had a middle school teacher who thought

"page 340 #s 1-60"

was a reasonable homework assignment. You do the first three, the last three, and a few in the middle. The rest you skip. It's just retaining sanity.

Moonshadow101

It is cool, but it can't solve sqrt(x) = -1.

It can handle other square roots, though.

somethings90

And let's see how quickly Google adds this to their search when they learn how useful it is...or can Google already do this?

If you would like to solve the equation, and to be able to show your work try:

www.algebrahelp.com/calculators/equation

It doesn't seem as robust as other solvers, but you will understand how to arrive at the solution.

Additional calculators under:

www.algebrahelp.com/calculators

NickF