Building a custom math tutor powered by ChatGPT

OpenAI

February 4, 2025

ChatGPT

It’s cold and raining in Didsbury, a quaint suburb outside Manchester.

As Phil Birchenall sits at his kitchen table, the rain drizzles down the window behind, turning the winsome cottages and well kept greenery into a chilly impromptu impressionist painting. It doesn’t seem to matter to Phil, because when he starts talking about his 12-year-old daughter, Daisy, it’s nothing but warmth.

“She’s a brilliant kid. She’s funny. She’s sharp. She loves baking and absolutely idolizes animals. Our dog, Izzy, is her absolute baby and they are inseparable. It’s really really cute.”

The sparkle in his eyes as he speaks makes it obvious just how much he cares about his daughter. So when he got a letter from Daisy’s teacher after school, he jumped on the problem with verve.

“Her teacher sent me a note back…Don’t worry she’s doing really super well on every subject, but just on maths she’s not doing as well as we might want her to.”

Phil Birchenall

Phil’s first instinct was to try what he calls, “the kitchen table approach.” The particular math that Daisy had been struggling with were multiplying fractions and long division. That evening, he sat down with Daisy - Izzy snuggling under her chair - and opened up a text book. That’s when he realized math had changed.

“I'm looking at the guide and I'm going and I'm desperate to work out what it's telling me. My brain can't process it. My brain's going back to 1986… I can't even reconcile, you know, the two methodologies.”

Surrounded by fresh notebooks, sharpened pencils, and a text book that reads to him like hieroglyphics, Phil was dumbfounded. His daughter knew there was something wrong right away.

“Daisy sat there looking at me…I could see the color washing from her face, thinking this is not helping me one bit.”

“Why the heck couldn’t this AI maths tutor not do dog jokes? Not be the dog? Why the heck not?”

Phil Birchenall

If you’re wondering, the real Izzy still could care less about long division.