Education
"Which LLM should I use?": Evaluating LLMs for tasks performed by Undergraduate Computer Science Students in India
Agarwal, Vibhor, Thureja, Nakul, Garg, Madhav Krishan, Dharmavaram, Sahiti, Meghna, null, Kumar, Dhruv
This study evaluates the effectiveness of various large language models (LLMs) in performing tasks common among undergraduate computer science students. Although a number of research studies in the computing education community have explored the possibility of using LLMs for a variety of tasks, there is a lack of comprehensive research comparing different LLMs and evaluating which LLMs are most effective for different tasks. Our research systematically assesses some of the publicly available LLMs such as Google Bard, ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot Chat, and Microsoft Copilot across diverse tasks commonly encountered by undergraduate computer science students. These tasks include code generation, explanation, project ideation, content generation, class assignments, and email composition. Evaluation for these tasks was carried out by junior and senior students in computer science, and provides insights into the models' strengths and limitations. This study aims to guide students in selecting suitable LLMs for any specific task and offers valuable insights on how LLMs can be used constructively by students and instructors.
Leveraging Social Media Data to Identify Factors Influencing Public Attitude Towards Accessibility, Socioeconomic Disparity and Public Transportation
Momin, Khondhaker Al, Sadri, Arif Mohaimin, Hasnine, Md Sami
This study proposes a novel method to understand the factors affecting individuals' perception of transport accessibility, socioeconomic disparity, and public infrastructure. As opposed to the time consuming and expensive survey-based approach, this method can generate organic large-scale responses from social media and develop statistical models to understand individuals' perceptions of various transportation issues. This study retrieved and analyzed 36,098 tweets from New York City from March 19, 2020, to May 15, 2022. A state-of-the-art natural language processing algorithm is used for text mining and classification. A data fusion technique has been adopted to generate a series of socioeconomic traits that are used as explanatory variables in the model. The model results show that females and individuals of Asian origin tend to discuss transportation accessibility more than their counterparts, with those experiencing high neighborhood traffic also being more vocal. However, disadvantaged individuals, including the unemployed and those living in low-income neighborhoods or in areas with high natural hazard risks, tend to communicate less about such issues. As for socioeconomic disparity, individuals of Asian origin and those experiencing various types of air pollution are more likely to discuss these topics on Twitter, often with a negative sentiment. However, unemployed, or disadvantaged individuals, as well as those living in areas with high natural hazard risks or expected losses, are less inclined to tweet about this subject. Lack of internet accessibility could be a reason why many disadvantaged individuals do not tweet about transport accessibility and subsidized internet could be a possible solution.
Using Java Geometry Expert as Guide in the Preparations for Math Contests
Ganglmayr, Ines, Kovács, Zoltán
The use of technical media in Austrian mathematics lessons is largely limited to the GeoGebra medium. GeoGebra [5] proved to be a great tool to visualize and analyze classroom problems, but certain tasks like proving geometric facts rigorously by using a visual explanation is not supported by GeoGebra. As an alternative approach, we focus on introducing JGEX [6] as opposed to GeoGebra, specifically in the area of competition tasks. Geometric proofs are no longer an important part of secondary school curriculum in Austria and many other countries. Formerly, however, Euclidean plane geometry and proving more complicated facts was a part of the expected knowledge of secondary level.
Solving Some Geometry Problems of the N\'aboj 2023 Contest with Automated Deduction in GeoGebra Discovery
Hota, Amela, Kovács, Zoltán, Vujic, Alexander
In this article, we solve some of the geometry problems of the N\'aboj 2023 competition with the help of a computer, using examples that the software tool GeoGebra Discovery can calculate. In each case, the calculation requires symbolic computations. We analyze the difficulty of feeding the problem into the machine and set further goals to make the problems of this type of contests even more tractable in the future.
The Locus Story of a Rocking Camel in a Medical Center in the City of Freistadt
Käferböck, Anna, Kovács, Zoltán
Automated reasoning in geometry is available in various software tools for several years, mostly in prover packages. In this paper we pay our attention to a non-trivial presence of a geometry prover in the software tool GeoGebra Discovery [4, 5] that aims at reaching secondary schools with its intuitive user interface. Most importantly, we give a report on a STEM/STEAM project that was discussed in a group of prospective mathematics teachers at the Private University College of Education of the Diocese of Linz in Upper Austria during the winter semester 2022/23, in the frame of a course that focuses on exploiting technology in mathematics education (36 students in 2 working groups). This project consisted of several other experiments that were already communicated by the second author. The discussed activity, a detailed study of the movement of a rocking camel, is however, completely new. Also, some major improvements in the underlying software tool (implemented by the second author with a substantial help of the students' feedback), makes it much easier to model similar project setups and conclude mathematical knowledge in an automated way.
Solving with GeoGebra Discovery an Austrian Mathematics Olympiad problem: Lessons Learned
Ariño-Morera, Belén, Kovács, Zoltán, Recio, Tomás, Tolmos, Piedad
We address, through the automated reasoning tools in GeoGebra Discovery, a problem from a regional phase of the Austrian Mathematics Olympiad 2023. Trying to solve this problem gives rise to four different kind of feedback: the almost instantaneous, automated solution of the proposed problem; the measure of its complexity, according to some recent proposals; the automated discovery of a generalization of the given assertion, showing that the same statement is true over more general polygons than those mentioned in the problem; and the difficulties associated to the analysis of the surprising and involved high number of degenerate cases that appear when using the LocusEquation command in this problem. In our communication we will describe and reflect on these diverse issues, enhancing its exemplar role for showing some of the advantages, problems, and current fields of development of GeoGebra Discovery.
Automated Completion of Statements and Proofs in Synthetic Geometry: an Approach based on Constraint Solving
Gonzalez, Salwa Tabet, Janičić, Predrag, Narboux, Julien
Automated theorem provers take as input the formal statement of a conjecture in a theory described by axioms and lemmas, and try to generate a proof or a counter-example for this conjecture. In the field of geometry, several efficient automated theorem proving approaches have been developed, including algebraic ones such as Wu's method, Gröbner bases method, and semi-synthetic methods such as the area method. In these approaches, typically, the conjecture and the axioms being considered are fixed. However, in mathematical practice, in the context of education and also in mathematical research, the conjecturing and proving activities are not separated but interleaved. The practitioner may try to prove a statement which is valid only assuming some implicit or unknown assumptions, while the list of lemmas and theorem which can be used may not be complete.
Large Language Models are Superpositions of All Characters: Attaining Arbitrary Role-play via Self-Alignment
Lu, Keming, Yu, Bowen, Zhou, Chang, Zhou, Jingren
Considerable efforts have been invested in augmenting the role-playing proficiency of open-source large language models (LLMs) by emulating proprietary counterparts. Nevertheless, we posit that LLMs inherently harbor role-play capabilities, owing to the extensive knowledge of characters and potential dialogues ingrained in their vast training corpora. Thus, in this study, we introduce Ditto, a self-alignment method for role-play. Ditto capitalizes on character knowledge, encouraging an instruction-following LLM to simulate role-play dialogues as a variant of reading comprehension. This method creates a role-play training set comprising 4,000 characters, surpassing the scale of currently available datasets by tenfold regarding the number of roles. Subsequently, we fine-tune the LLM using this self-generated dataset to augment its role-playing capabilities. Upon evaluating our meticulously constructed and reproducible role-play benchmark and the roleplay subset of MT-Bench, Ditto, in various parameter scales, consistently maintains a consistent role identity and provides accurate role-specific knowledge in multi-turn role-play conversations. Notably, it outperforms all open-source role-play baselines, showcasing performance levels comparable to advanced proprietary chatbots. Furthermore, we present the first comprehensive cross-supervision alignment experiment in the role-play domain, revealing that the intrinsic capabilities of LLMs confine the knowledge within role-play. Meanwhile, the role-play styles can be easily acquired with the guidance of smaller models. We open-source related resources at https://github.com/OFA-Sys/Ditto.
Evaluating Roadside Perception for Autonomous Vehicles: Insights from Field Testing
Zhang, Rusheng, Meng, Depu, Shen, Shengyin, Wang, Tinghan, Karir, Tai, Maile, Michael, Liu, Henry X.
Roadside perception systems are increasingly crucial in enhancing traffic safety and facilitating cooperative driving for autonomous vehicles. Despite rapid technological advancements, a major challenge persists for this newly arising field: the absence of standardized evaluation methods and benchmarks for these systems. This limitation hampers the ability to effectively assess and compare the performance of different systems, thus constraining progress in this vital field. This paper introduces a comprehensive evaluation methodology specifically designed to assess the performance of roadside perception systems. Our methodology encompasses measurement techniques, metric selection, and experimental trial design, all grounded in real-world field testing to ensure the practical applicability of our approach. We applied our methodology in Mcity\footnote{\url{https://mcity.umich.edu/}}, a controlled testing environment, to evaluate various off-the-shelf perception systems. This approach allowed for an in-depth comparative analysis of their performance in realistic scenarios, offering key insights into their respective strengths and limitations. The findings of this study are poised to inform the development of industry-standard benchmarks and evaluation methods, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of roadside perception system development and deployment for autonomous vehicles. We anticipate that this paper will stimulate essential discourse on standardizing evaluation methods for roadside perception systems, thus pushing the frontiers of this technology. Furthermore, our results offer both academia and industry a comprehensive understanding of the capabilities of contemporary infrastructure-based perception systems.
Development of an NLP-driven computer-based test guide for visually impaired students
Nemieboka, Tubo Faustinah, Onyenwe, Ikechukwu E., Asogwa, Doris C.
In recent years, advancements in Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques have revolutionized the field of accessibility and exclusivity of testing, particularly for visually impaired students (VIS). CBT has shown in years back its relevance in terms of administering exams electronically, making the test process easier, providing quicker and more accurate results, and offering greater flexibility and accessibility for candidates. Yet, its relevance was not felt by the visually impaired students as they cannot access printed documents. Hence, in this paper, we present an NLP-driven Computer-Based Test guide for visually impaired students. It employs a speech technology pre-trained methods to provide real-time assistance and support to visually impaired students. The system utilizes NLP technologies to convert the text-based questions and the associated options in a machine-readable format. Subsequently, the speech technology pre-trained model processes the converted text enabling the VIS to comprehend and analyze the content. Furthermore, we validated that this pre-trained model is not perverse by testing for accuracy using sample audio datasets labels (A, B, C, D, E, F, G) to compare with the voice recordings obtained from 20 VIS which is been predicted by the system to attain values for precision, recall, and F1-scores. These metrics are used to assess the performance of the pre-trained model and have indicated that it is proficient enough to give its better performance to the evaluated system. The methodology adopted for this system is Object Oriented Analysis and Design Methodology (OOADM) where Objects are discussed and built by modeling real-world instances.