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 in the evening 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 optimised 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 recognises 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: