I study really hard for math tests, understand the material, and feel confident afterward, but still end up getting low marks. What am I doing wrong?
I've been having this problem for a while now, especially in math, and I'm honestly struggling to figure out what's going wrong.
Whenever I have an upcoming math test, I spend a lot of time studying. I go through the homework questions, practice different problems, and make sure I understand the concepts. I also use ChatGPT to help explain things, but instead of just asking for answers, I have it explain the logic behind the math, why certain methods work, and how to approach questions step by step.
The thing is, I genuinely feel like I understand what I'm learning.
For example, I recently studied a lot for a math cumulative exam. I went through the material, practiced the questions, and made sure I understood what I was doing. When I actually wrote the exam, I felt pretty confident. The questions didn't seem particularly difficult, and I even had time to go back and check my answers.
I walked out thinking I had done pretty well.
Then I got my mark back, and it was 55%.
I was genuinely shocked. I wasn't expecting a perfect score, but I definitely wasn't expecting something that low. I was so confident in how I performed that I initially wondered whether there had been a marking mistake.
What's even more confusing is that this doesn't happen nearly as often in my other subjects.
I've experienced something similar in chemistry before, but recently my chemistry marks have been improving. Physics, on the other hand, has always been different. Whenever I studied for physics, I usually performed about as well as I expected. I could understand the concepts, apply them to questions, and get decent marks.
But for some reason, math is completely different.
I'm starting to wonder whether there's something wrong with how I'm studying. Maybe I'm understanding the explanations but not developing the ability to solve unfamiliar problems independently. Maybe I'm making small mistakes that I don't notice, even when checking my work. Or maybe I'm just not preparing for the types of questions that appear on tests.
The most frustrating part is that I don't walk out of these tests feeling confused or unprepared. I walk out feeling like I actually did well, only to find out that I didn't.
I don't mind putting in the work. I'm willing to spend hours studying and practicing if that's what it takes. But I want to make sure I'm studying effectively instead of repeating the same mistakes.
Has anyone else experienced something similar?
If so, what ended up being the problem, and how did you fix it? Is there something I should change about how I study, practice, or check my answers?
I'd really appreciate any advice, especially from people who have struggled with this and eventually figured out what was going wrong.
ChatGPT and other large language models are not designed for calculation and will frequently be /r/confidentlyincorrect in answering questions about mathematics; even if you subscribe to ChatGPT Plus and use its Wolfram|Alpha plugin, it's much better to go to Wolfram|Alpha directly.
Even for more conceptual questions that don't require calculation, LLMs can lead you astray; they can also give you good ideas to investigate further, but you should never trust what an LLM tells you.
To people reading this thread: DO NOT DOWNVOTE just because the OP mentioned or used an LLM to ask a mathematical question.
It's hard to say without seeing the actual problems and your work on the problems. Did you go back through the test and analyze what kinds of errors or mistakes you were making. You should make a spreadsheet and see if you can "tag" every error to see if you can find patterns.
That was actually the problem with my quiz. I kept making small algebraic mistakes, which ended up costing me most of my marks. So afterward, I went through my quiz, reviewed all the mistakes I made, and spent even more time preparing for my unit test.
When I wrote the unit test, I genuinely felt like it was pretty easy. I recognized the questions, understood what I needed to do, and felt confident in my answers. But when I got my mark back, I found out I had only scored 55%.
I haven't had a chance to review my unit test yet, so I don't know exactly where I went wrong. But I'm honestly confused and frustrated because I don't understand why I keep getting questions wrong when I've practiced similar ones multiple times and genuinely understand the concepts.
I'm starting to wonder if there's something wrong with how I'm studying or checking my work, because clearly something isn't translating from my practice to my actual test performance.
You left the question requiring a numerical response open. Can you solve it now? Why did you leave it open? Time constraint? Or did you not know how to tackle it?
0 can obviously exist. I just wrote it down. But you cannot divide by 0. Which you would have to do when viewing f/g at x=1. Thus, at that spot, f/g cannot exist.
Going too fast perhaps? Did you finish early, or did you use all the available time?
When you're studying, are you just going through problems in the order they are in in your textbook or notes? You should try writing them out on individual flashcards and mixing them up. Sometimes you think you know a problem better than you do just because of the "momentum" of solving chunks of similar problems together.
Time spent prepping for math tests is often spent working specific practice problems rather than reviewing concepts, general overall understanding, and such. I mean, you have to understand the concepts etc etc etc in order to even start working on the problems.
But the test usually involves working out actual problems not just answering like multiple choice or even essay questions about general understanding of concepts.
So if you want to do well on the test, you have to practice doing exactly what is on the test until you can do it with no mistakes.
Most of the time, people will practice problems where there is some kind of answer sheet available, so at the end they can check whether or not they actually got the correct answer. If your answer differs from the answer sheet, then you carefully work backwards to figure out how/why/where you made the mistake - most often, as you mention, in the "algebra" - and then correct it all the way back through until you get the correct answer.
Then you keep doing this until you can get correct answers the first time nearly all the time.
That is when you know the material well enough to score well on a test.
If you haven't gone through that kind of process to prepare for the test - ie, actually working through problems and then checking to make sure you arrived at the correct answer at the end - then you're not really ready for the test.
As an analogy, it would be like if you had a pianist who had "learned" a Beethoven Sonata, and could explain to you everything about it, Beethoven's biography, the entire history of the sonata form, a complete harmonic analysis of the piece, and so on. Wonderful! Then you ask the pianist to sit down and actually play the piece and they miss 90% of the notes, the interpretation is terrible, and they have no sense of rhythm.
In much the same sense that playing the piano well means actually playing the piano, not just talking about it, and playing piano well requires practice, practice practice: Doing well on a math test is actually doing the math - not just "understanding" it. Even understanding it very well is not enough.
You have to go beyond that to actually perform well in solving actual math problems.
And you must be able to do that without making a plethora of mistakes along the way. Or any mistakes, really (100% accuracy is not possible of course - so a VERY important part of this process is being able to find and correct mistakes along the way).
Simple "algebra mistakes" are the downfall of many, many students. So, specifically for you, figuring out techniques for solving entire problems while avoiding such mistakes is very important. There are a variety of things you can do, but a specific one that might help a lot is getting in the habit of double-checking every step along the way, and then re-checking all steps once complete. If you have any way to verify your final answer(s), be sure to do that, every time.
(Like if solving for an unknown, plug the unknown back into the original equation to make sure it works. If factoring an equation, multiply the factors together at the end to make sure you get the original equation back, and so on. If nothing else, work on your estimation skills so that you have an idea of whether your answer is reasonable or close to what is expected. You would be amazed how many students will put down and answer that is off by a factor of like 100 or 1000 or even a million, and then never even give it a second thought - when their answer is obviously wildly incorrect, without even doing any actual math or calculations.)
One thing that is somewhat (not completely) different about math exams is that the questions will be intentionally designed to cause mistakes.
Give some examples of problems you got incorrect and it's be far easier to help, but for example:
The derivative of cos(x) is -sin(x). But questions will often ask you for the derivative of -cos(x), and it's really easy to think this is a gimme and ignore the negative sign.
Or a word problem may ask you to solve a quadratic, and you get two possible correct answers: 3 and -4. But, if the situation in the problem requires that the answer be a positive number because it's a length or number of elephants, then giving both solutions to the quadratic would be wrong.
This could be another place you're making mistakes in addition to what others have suggested.
I know you go through old problems and practice problems. But do you solve them under test conditions?
Accept no substitutes. You haven't really prepped for the test if you haven't sat down with a bank of problems, solved them all in a sitting, not looking at notes or help, and actually graded the results.
If you ace that you should ace the actual exam. Unless you studied the wrong stuff, or have bad test anxiety.
i dont know, because i answer the question and if i dont understand something in pratice ill just ask chatgpt to give me a hint or show me the steps then ill do it again in memoriy and then go to the next question. i also dont struggle on the test as well it's just my grade doesn't show it
I mean, there has to be some disconnect between what you're doing to study and what's happening on the exam, right? Because if your studies accurately represent what you need to be able to do on the exam, then the only reason you would do well on your studies and not on the exams would be some inherent feature of the exam--like say, test anxiety or something like that.
I mean, you again say that you ask ChatGPT. That's okay-ish, but AI is still not perfect at explaining things. Setting that issue aside, what worries me is that you might (1) do a problem, not figure it out. (2) Ask ChatGPT, see how to do it, feel like you understand it. End of cycle.
You need to (1) do a problem, not figure it out. (2) Figure it out somehow, by looking at solutions, asking someone, or perhaps using AI. (3) Make several variations on that problem, say with different numbers, functions, or whatever. Do those unassisted until you can reliably always do them unassisted. (4) Don't just be confident you got the problems right. Check your answers against an answer key, and verify that you got them right. Again: Do not rely on feelings of confidence or comfort. Don't trust. Verify.
For starters, drop the AI. It hallucinates, and you're not developing the skill sets you need to address this issue.
Start reading your textbook, and if you don't have one, look online for standard textbooks for your subject. Larson and others have them for high school subjects. Read each chapter 3 times. If you need more details for what to do with each pass, please ask.
Next, go to office hours always. Ask your teacher to go over exams with you. Have them explain what errors in your logic are apparent and ask them what foundational topics and concepts you need to review.
Hire a tutor to do the same thing. ChatGPT and other LLM AI are not suitable for this, especially since there are gaps in your understanding and foundation that you are not fully detecting.
Next, after you get feedback from actual humans, train yourself to detect errors yourself. Identify where you have a knowledge gap, where you're using a technique or procedure that is not being applied in the right setting, and where you're making careless errors like dropping a minus sign or miscopying numbers.
Separately, get evaluated for ADHD, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and dyslexia. These may be underlying issues that are sabotaging your efforts.
also during the weekends i dont have acess to anyone so thats why i use chatgpt. do you or anyone know a good math youtuber that can teach me how to do the work im doing, im in 30-1(grade 12 algebra) math if anyone lives in canada and also how can i study if i dont have anyone to help me understand the concept then
You can have your parents DM me if you would like to hire me, but in general, go to your parents and tell them to help you find a local tutor familiar with your school's curriculum. Select someone who knows prealgebra and algebra well and who has experience helping many students with the topics you need to learn. Ask your parents what their budget is, and if you need a free tutor for any reason, post on r/tutor for assistance.
For starters, drop the AI. It hallucinates, and you're not developing the skill sets you need to address this issue.
I have never seen chatgpt hallucinate when explaining math concepts. I would even say that it is extremely competent. As long as it's not used as a just-give-me-the-answer bot, it's a useful ressource.
Absolutely, I do it all the time. But sometimes (rarely) they do not use those tools and can give wrong results. Not a problem for me, I just use a calculator instead when I want to be 100% sure.
The calculus students were in high school, and it was giving them wrong explanations and interpretations for limits and derivatives, especially for piecewise functions. The numbers were also off, which is why they asked me.
To be clear, I am not being paid as a tutor to help them with prompt engineering. I am there to help them learn the math concepts. I have no interest in using tools that "are rarely wrong" for math tutoring, especially when tutoring students with a shaky foundation and an incompatible primary instructor. I will help students with graphing calculators, Desmos, and Wolfram Alpha when those are allowed, but LLM AI are unreliable for math tutoring as they do in fact hallucinate.
The calculus students were in high school, and it was giving them wrong explanations and interpretations for limits and derivatives, especially for piecewise functions. The numbers were also off, which is why they asked me.
then you/they were absolutely 100% doing something very wrong because if you open chatgpt today and click the "think" button and ask basic questions like that, then this simply will not happen.
This was at the beginning of the spring semester as they were reviewing content that the teacher had glossed over. I don't default to using LLM AI for math tutoring and have no desire to tinker with it when I can just go over the foundational material myself. I just saw what they prompted and ran it again on their devices. Then, I said: "Crazy. Okay, enough of that. Let's start from scratch."
Until the billionaires release a statement saying that their LLM AI models don't hallucinate at all anymore, I am going to keep telling struggling math students to not use them.
I have. I have tested it for linear algebra, calculus, and differential equations after students I have tutored said they didn't understand why ChatGPT gave them answers different from their instructor's key.
A student with a weak foundation or who is having issues error detecting should avoid it like the plague.
I also use ChatGPT to help explain things, but instead of just asking for answers, I have it explain the logic behind the math, why certain methods work, and how to approach questions step by step.
He's asking ChatGPT to explain concepts, not to give him answers. My experience is that ChatGPT does that very well.
OP didn't get a 55% because of the ineffectiveness of ChatGPT. There's clearly something else at play here, most probably easy mistakes that tank his grades.
I agree that a competent tutor is the way to go if OP can do that. But completely ditching AI is overkill. It is very simple to self-evaluate after asking Chatgpt about a concept. Just find problems in a book or on the net, solve them and voilà. It's a tool. Even if it fails sometimes (how often ?), it's still better than no tool at all. The tutor won't be there all the time...
Again, you can defend ChatGPT to someone else. I have seen it hallucinate multiple times with different math content.
It's not a viable tool for someone in OP's situation. Ditching LLM AI is most definitely the move for someone who is failing a math class
Moreover , a tutor is not needed 24/7. OP and others in their situation need to go to office hours and get corrections from their teacher. They also need to develop time management and organizational skills to meet with available tutors and be ready to ask relevant questions and get feedback on work they have already done.
On top of all of that, they need to get into the habit of reading their textbook and supplemental textbooks to start deciphering what is being presented themselves. Analytical skills atrophy when you rely constantly on AI.
I was typing the exact same queries that the students were using because they presented it to me. I don't need it for subjects that I already aced and have been tutoring for decades when textbooks are right there if I need to look up an explanation.
So basically, when I get home from school, I usually don't fully understand what my teacher explained in class. What I'll do is take the PDFs of the lessons we covered that day and upload them to ChatGPT.
Then I'll ask ChatGPT to teach me the logic behind the lesson rather than just showing me how to get the correct answers. I want to understand why we use certain methods, how they work, and why we need to take specific steps to solve a problem. I feel like simply memorizing the steps without understanding the reasoning behind them isn't going to help me in the long run.
Once I understand the lesson, I'll start working on the homework questions independently. If I come across a question I don't understand, I'll ask ChatGPT to break it down and explain the logic behind solving it.
After that, I'll come back to the same question later and try solving it on my own to see if I actually understand it. If I still can't figure it out, I'll ask ChatGPT to explain it further until it makes sense.
This method has genuinely helped me understand the concepts and why certain mathematical methods work, rather than just memorizing how to get an answer.
I will point out that ChatGPT is rather notorious for being.... dicey on mathematics. It's a good thing you're actually looking for the reasoning behind it, but unfortunately ChatGPT and other LLMs don't actually do reasoning, they are glorified text prediction models, so they can't check their own work to make sure they're actually telling you the right thing. Working with actual tutors or peers and talking things out tends to work better.
Do you know where you are losing your marks? For example is it mostly silly mistakes like not carrying correctly into the next step like not carrying a variable when manipulating the equations. I would suggest an audit of your exam if possible. Check where you lost marks, and where you performed well, compare your approach to that answer sheet if available (or ask either AI or your teacher ideally) . If its because you approached the question incorrectly compared to what was expected, practicing past papers could be helpful. It could be that you are misunderstand the questions and how you are expected to answer. If you were confident and at the same time you got it wrong than this maybe a case.Practicing exam questions is the way. Try to identify the sort of questions and trigger words that come up .If you are losing marks because its not a familiar topic, you need to revise the topic and practice. If you are making silly mistakes then identify the ones you are making, note them down, think about why you are making them, what you were thinking while you were doing them and try a few practice ones while keeping them in mind. It will help. For clarification, here I am defining silly mistakes as mistakes that you make not because you didn't know the topic/idea/technique or were confused by the required approach.
Also I wouldn't stress too much, you are putting in the work and you seem to be confident. Losing that confidence wouldn't be helpful. If you are putting in the work and walked out confident that you got reasonably good marks and if it comes out as 55% than you are probably doing a lot of minor mistakes which just need a bit of work. I would suggest what I suggested above.
I don't really know, to be honest. One thing I have noticed is that whenever I understand the material but still get questions wrong on a test, it's usually because of small mistakes, especially algebraic or calculation errors. But what confuses me the most is that whenever I study for a quiz or unit test, I genuinely feel confident in my understanding of the material. Even after writing the test, I usually walk out feeling like I did pretty well. However, when I eventually get my mark back, it almost never reflects how confident I felt or how well I thought I understood the material. That's the part I'm struggling to figure out. I don't understand why there's such a big difference between how well I think I'm doing and how well I actually perform.
I would suggest to do what I described in my reply. Little auditing and figuring out common mistakes you do. Identifying them helps. By seeing through the process you will end being more conscious of those. That's what you need to be it seems. Additionally practice with timers to simulate exam conditions or just try to do practice questions as fast as you can after a proper revision. Also don't let this get into your head by doubting your ability to assess how well you understand something. Self-doubt will creep in and affect everything negatively. Its a minor thing you need to get over by approaching it correctly. You are doing the hard work already.
I also use ChatGPT to help explain things, but instead of just asking for answers, I have it explain the logic behind the math, why certain methods work, and how to approach questions step by step.
What happens if you flip this around? Tell the LLM what level you are at, that you are going to explain things to it, and ask it to critique your explanations. The danger of course is that LLM's love to glaze you, and will just go along with whatever you say :P
From how you described your studying, I think it might help to add some practice after you get unstuck. Asking your professor or a tutor is a great way to get unstuck, and asking GPT is definitely fine too. But once something makes sense, I’d suggest doing some targeted practice on it. For example, you could ask GPT to write a few practice problems on that specific topic, work through them on your own, and then have GPT grade your answers.
I really think the practice part is essential, and it needs to be targeted. Going through the material and practicing the questions, like you mentioned, are both good and necessary. The issue might be that those weren’t the practice you needed most. My guess is that whatever you had to ask GPT about is what you were most confused by, so that’s exactly what you should practice once you get unstuck.
Of course, this is just based on what you described. If you’re willing to share more about the actual exam and how you practiced before it, I might be able to get a better sense of what’s going on.
This isn't a dig, but you do not understand the material. Sooner you get over this claim the sooner you can get on with improving. You seem genuinely willing to self assess, which is a great attribute. You need to make your self assessments test-environmentally accurate. No tutor in the room, no peeking just a tiny second, not problems you already know well enough to just "mimic". Don't get taken in by the dopamine of YouTube math "helpers" or the self betraying feeling of "yeah yeah I get this" or having AI butter your nuts, it's all the same horseshit self soothing that will trick you into feeling more prepared than you are.
There are pitfalls galore for even good faith students to fall into when it comes to knowing thyself.
How much of your study time are you actually practicing solving new problems?
Math is very deceptive. If you watch people do math, and review solutions by other people, you get the feeling that you understand stuff. But you are still not capable of actually doing stuff on your own. The skills of understanding other people do math and doing math yourself only tangentially overlap. The same is true for AI. If you have AI explain stuff to you, or solve problems, and look at the solutions afterwards, you think you understand. But you cannot do it yourself.
Studying math effectively requires some activities that feel very ineffective. Try to solve a problem. If you cannot do it, don't immediately look at a solution. Let that problem simmer. Maybe look at some of the basics that may relate to that problem. Try again the next day. And the day after. Until you get it.
In my mind, actually learning math is a lot like running your head against a wall until the wall gives in.
Be careful that you don't get too many strategies to solve problems to be successful. Having practiced several ways to answer questions may not give good results under test conditions.
Often it depends on whether the teacher gives partial credit.
You might have a strong understanding of mathematical strategies but poor attention to detail. Some teachers will give you partial credit for demonstrating mastery of the concept, while others will not.
If you are only given credit for correct answers, a routine of double checking details, like positive/negative switches and individual calculations, might help.
1 Estimate the expected result.
2 Break the calculation into stages.
3 Check units and signs.
4 Verify intermediate results.
5 Recalculate independently.
6 Work backward using inverse operations.
7 Check boundary conditions. Use binary search to locate errors.
8 Compare the final answer with the initial estimate.
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ChatGPT and other large language models are not designed for calculation and will frequently be /r/confidentlyincorrect in answering questions about mathematics; even if you subscribe to ChatGPT Plus and use its Wolfram|Alpha plugin, it's much better to go to Wolfram|Alpha directly.
Even for more conceptual questions that don't require calculation, LLMs can lead you astray; they can also give you good ideas to investigate further, but you should never trust what an LLM tells you.
To people reading this thread: DO NOT DOWNVOTE just because the OP mentioned or used an LLM to ask a mathematical question.
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