In the Intelligence, Literacy, Carpet thread, people have been testing ChatGPT on questions that, combined, only 4% of people get right.
The first was a Q about calculating the cost of carpet sold by the square yard, to cover a room whose dimensions were given in feet.
ChatGPT got the answer right. But I wondered if this might be because the test used or something close to it cropped up in training data. So I gave it a similar test.
It failed to get the right answer, but in quite interesting ways.
Prompt:
Suppose you want to sow a grass field which is 1503 feet by 2184 feet, and you purchase grass seed at 30% off in a sale. It will cost £7.89 per square yard of coverage. How much will it cost to sow the field?
Response:
To calculate the cost of sowing the grass field, you’ll need to follow these steps:
- Calculate the area of the field in square feet: Area = Length x Width Area = 1503 feet x 2184 feet Area = 3,281,352 square feet
- Convert the area to square yards since the grass seed price is given per square yard: 1 square yard = 9 square feet Area in square yards = 3,281,352 square feet / 9 square feet/square yard Area in square yards = 364,594.67 square yards (approximately)
- Calculate the regular price of the grass seed for the entire field: Regular price = Area in square yards x Price per square yard Regular price = 364,594.67 square yards x £7.89/square yard
Regular price = £2,877,873.66 (approximately)
- Apply the 30% discount to find the sale price: Sale price = Regular price - (30% of Regular price) Sale price = £2,877,873.66 - (0.30 x £2,877,873.66)
Sale price ≈ £2,014,511.56
So, it will cost approximately £2,014,511.56 to sow the field with grass seed at a 30% discount.