I let an AI math tutor for Singaporean students teach me secondary school math. Here’s how it went

I have never been good at math.

My secondary school days were some 10 years ago (wild), and there was no such thing as ChatGPT or an AI math tutor to get me through most of my classes. And while I’ve certainly repressed most of those memories, certain things still haunt me to this day.

There were the popular mean girls, the cold and dry canteen food, and obviously, the dread that I would never be good enough for anything – typical things any Asian kid would go through during their time in secondary school.

While the follies of youth certainly made their mark on my formative years, one truth remains – I was, and still am, bad at math. Everything after the timetable and fractions was pretty much a blur to me, punctuated by memories of my math teacher sighing deeply every time I received a quiz, workbook, or exam paper from him.

So, imagine my apprehensiveness when I was asked to try out an AI math tutor at the ripe age of 27.

Teo and Swee created WizzTutor to make it easier for secondary school students in Singaore to get the math help they need. Source: WizzTutor

Introducing WizzTutor, your handy AI math tutor

WizzTutor was created to help secondary school students in Singapore access personalised math support for just 2 Singapore dollars (US$1.56) a day. The platform features over 10,000 math questions aligned with the standards and guidelines set by the Singaporean Ministry of Education (MOE), and can be accessed anytime, anywhere.

The powerhouses behind it? Samuel Swee, a former MOE Teaching Scholar, and Clifford Teo, who has years of experience scaling tech products across industries, including mobility, fintech and Web3.

“WizzTutor puts an adaptive, private math tutor in every student’s pocket for just about the price of a coffee,” says Swee. “This makes it a practical option for parents who need extra academic support for their children.”

Because let’s face it – even with expensive private tuition or one-on-one tutoring, there would always be students who need a little extra help, especially if they’re preparing for exams. WizzTutor was designed to supplement that need.

And unlike traditional tuition centres, where progress can be challenging to track, WizzTutor’s dedicated parent dashboard offers real-time updates and weekly reports. It means parents always remain informed of their child’s learning journey.

Thankfully, I no longer have to report my math scores to my parents, so trying out an AI math tutor like WizzTutor meant I had nothing to lose except my personal dignity.

 

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What my experience with the AI math tutor was like

You know that stereotype of communications students only choosing that degree because it doesn’t have math?

Yeah, that’s me. Guilty as charged.

I’m not proud to say that my math knowledge has regressed to the level of an early secondary-schooler, but then again, I couldn’t name a single time I’ve used integers since graduating. I’ve never discovered a way to master the subject without loathing it.

So I’d say I’m the perfect person to test out an AI math tutor like WizzTutor.

First, it’s not an app that one downloads through the PlayStore or something similar – it’s a web-based platform designed to be accessible on any device. It offers a free trial with two modules each from Secondary One to Secondary Four, with other modules locked behind their paid services.

That would suffice for my attempt. No way was I going to complete all those modules (and succeed) anyway.

As its target audience is students, it allows handwriting input, suitable for those using styluses or iPads. I tested it out with my drawing tablet and mouse – thankfully, the application recognised both inputs.

I began with the module “Factors and Multiples.” Immediately, I was stuck – not because of the platform, which looked pretty simple to navigate – but because of my abilities (or lack thereof).

Thankfully, Miss Andrea was there to help. Who was she, you may ask? The AI math tutor accompanying each daunting question appears as a chatbot on the right side of the screen.

I tried telling it that I didn’t know how to get the answer, and it explained like so:

WizzTutor had more patience than my school teachers, which was great. Source: WizzTutor

The first thing you’d notice is that the AI math tutor didn’t just give me the answers straight up. Instead, it started nudging me in the right direction, prompting me to think and write the process myself.

I then gave it an incorrect answer– yes, it was on purpose – to see if it would spit out the answer. It didn’t, surprisingly – instead, it walked me through the process until I got the correct answer.

I worked through three questions (getting each one painfully wrong), and Miss Andrea patiently helped me through each one.

One thing that stood out to me was that the AI math tutor never provided the answer straight up. It nudged me in the right direction, prompting me to think and work the rusty gears in my brain.

Was this something that other AI platforms could do, I wondered? I pulled up ChatGPT to try it out and compare it myself.

How does WizzTutor differentiate from other AI-powered platforms?

I know what you’re probably thinking. Why pay for an AI math tutor when free options like ChatGPT or Gemini exist?

For starters, co-founder Teo explained that WizzTutor differentiated itself simply because it had over 10,000 MOE-approved questions, aligned with the Singaporean syllabus. Working out math questions with the platform prompts the system to figure out where you need extra help and point you in the right direction.

Initially, I thought ChatGPT would do something similar. I copied over a question from WizzTutor onto ChatGPT and immediately spotted an issue.

On WizzTutor, the question looked like this:

Beautiful. Clear. Tells me everything I need to know. Source: WizzTutor

On ChatGPT, it looked like this:

“Find the smallest integer x540x3 is a positive integer.”

Perhaps some folks may not see this as a problem – after all, as long as the answer is correct, who cares?

However, for visual learners like myself, ChatGPT’s output often confuses me, and it takes longer to absorb the information. In the end, I preferred WizzTutor’s AI math tutor’s response:

WizzTutor laid out the working process for me with a concise explanation, which I appreciated. Source: WizzTutor

Much easier to absorb, isn’t it?

My hunch was also confirmed – ChatGPT did provide the basic working process for a math question, but it also provided the answer immediately, without letting me think.

This means that any student using ChatGPT as an AI math tutor is missing out on most of the learning process, which Teo was happy to expand on.

“We provide scaffolded step-by-step guidance that mimics how a real tutor would help a student think through a problem, and not just give the answer,” he says. “The AI also does its best to understand the users as they go through the journey of using our platform. We’ll try to make sure we recommend questions and personalise the experience for them.”

It’s true – WizzTutor prompted me in the right direction, giving me hints and asking questions such as “Is 1001 divisible by 2? How about 3 or 5? What is the next prime number you could try?”

Even if I purposely told it things like “I don’t know” or “no,” WizzTutor continued to encourage me to think rather than just giving me the answer, and at the end of the day, I found myself actually getting the hang of it.

Being purposefully obtuse didn’t stop the AI math tutor from being extremely patient with me, without revealing the answer straightaway. Source: WizzTutor

Also, being able to write out my calculation process and answers helped tremendously. Rather than using my iPhone’s calculator or relying on Apple Intelligence’s auto-calculation feature, it felt like I was actually learning – or in this case, re-learning things from my secondary years.

Honestly, I liked it – as someone who spent years struggling with math in school, tuition classes, and private tutoring, I think something like WizzTutor would have helped me a lot if it existed back in my schooling days: no frustrated teachers, no judging glares, and no spoonfeeding answers.

And that’s what the creators of WizzTutor had set out to do in the first place – for students to learn the correct way, anytime, anywhere, at a fraction of the cost.