Socratic - The Homework App

Here is a common scenario for students: you get dis­tract­ed in class, look out the window briefly and before you know it, you’re sitting down at night to start your homework and you don’t know what you should be doing. The app “Socratic” is here to help: the ap­pli­ca­tion can solve even com­pli­cat­ed equations, answer questions about world history, grammar, and even as­tro­physics. Is it witch­craft? No, instead it runs on ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence. This guide will convey just how much the homework app can actually do.

At first glance, Socratic seems to make every student’s wildest dreams come true. All you have to do is take a photo of a math formula, and the app will work it out for you, providing the answers to your homework. But Socratic is more than just a digital cheat sheet. Instead of just dis­play­ing the end result, the app also explains the solution and offers extra sources to help you study and un­der­stand the process. It answers questions on numerous subject areas: English, history, geography, biology, or physics. Instead of giving a simple answer, it provides extensive ex­pla­na­tions. For example, if you ask Socratic about the Medieval Order, the app collects matching search results from the web for you to choose from. The same happens when you give it a com­pli­cat­ed equation from a math exam – the app can solve it in no time. The homework app, orig­i­nal­ly designed for iOS, has increased tremen­dous­ly in pop­u­lar­i­ty. The reason for this is that the app is now also available for Android devices, and un­der­stands multiple languages: not just English, but also German, Spanish, French, In­done­sian, and Por­tuguese.

The basis for the app’s ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence are the countless examples of solved problems that make up the app’s database, and a machine-learning algorithm developed in co­op­er­a­tion with teachers and experts. Using these methods, Socratic breaks down the basic concept that needs answering, and can explain the solution to the user based on examples. The app can even solve math­e­mat­i­cal or physical word problems: The cal­cu­la­tion is de­ter­mined by filtered keywords, and presents the user with ap­pro­pri­ate values. The following video from the developer il­lus­trates this with an example:

Thanks to com­pre­hen­sive community features, the app is con­stant­ly learning new things. This allows teachers and students to actively par­tic­i­pate and expand the question-and-answer resources. Meanwhile, according to the developer, there are more than 350,000 questions from 21 subjects or topics that have already been answered. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the Android app lacks a storage and archive function for questions that have already been asked. If you want to go back to a previous question or answer, you will have to take another photo of the problem, or type it again. Here are the results of our detailed test in three subjects that show how the un­der­ly­ing algorithm really works.

A good way to test the quality of Socratic’s math abilities is to pose one of the medieval math­e­mati­cian al-Chwarizmi’s (latin version: Algorismi) equations. The term “algorithm” is derived from his name, and as early as 825, the Iranian polymath presented six different types of quadratic roots. One of these is x² + bx = c. We are looking to solve x. Adding in numerical values, the equation could be: x² + 10x = 39. If you pho­to­graph this equation with Socratic, you will get the correct solution in just a few seconds: x = 3 or x = -13 and the step-by-step solution to the problem. The following YouTube video, created by the app de­vel­op­ers, shows another example, this time using text recog­ni­tion for hand­writ­ing.

The answers often come from the community platform “Yahoo! Clever” or from Socratic’s own community-based question-and-answer database. The app is also adept at finding relevant Wikipedia passages. Sometimes, there are less useful sources in the selection provided, some of which are not always optimized for mobile device use. This can com­pli­cate the search somewhat. If there is ab­solute­ly nothing useful, Socratic at least offers a reference to Google and puts the question to the popular search engine, allowing you to continue re­search­ing in­de­pen­dent­ly from the app.

Socratic un­der­stands homework in English better than other language versions of the app. Asking it to complete a task such as “underline the verb in the following sentence” results in Socratic bringing up a de­f­i­n­i­tion of the word “verb” and a similar question-answer com­bi­na­tion from the socratic.org database. This can be helpful in general, but does not help the specific problem posed.

These examples from our tests show that Socratic’s AI abilities depend on the question and the subject. While the homework app answers math problems and sci­en­tif­ic questions rel­a­tive­ly ac­cu­rate­ly, there is a bit of a hiccup in terms of hu­man­i­ties and languages. That being said, the app provides enough results that someone with a little back­ground knowledge could find the correct answer easily enough. Also, the AI in the app learns quickly thanks to a large community which con­stant­ly provides new questions and answers, and closes existing knowledge gaps through machine learning. 

Having a bit of ini­tia­tive as a user is key with this app. Socratic, despite the best efforts of de­vel­op­ers to provide a com­pre­hen­sive answer to every question, runs the risk that users will just use the app to find a quick answer rather than taking time to read the whole method behind the answer. On the other hand, Socratic is com­mend­able in that it provides the long-form de­scrip­tive answer in the first place.

At the end of the day, Socratic leaves a good im­pres­sion on users. The text recog­ni­tion function works very well with type­script and even rec­og­nizes short, well-penned hand­writ­ten questions. The app is also available for Android, allowing the majority of smart­phone users access to the app. Check our tabular overview for a list of ad­van­tages and dis­ad­van­tages of Socratic: