solve homework with camera google

Google Will Solve Your Kids' Math Homework. That's a Good Thing.

Here's the perfect tool for the homeschooling era.

• The tool is powered by optical character recognition (OCR), which uses scanning and artificial intelligence.
• The ability to check work is a gamechanger for families facing emergency homeschooling.

Google has announced a new technology, powered by an acquisition called Socratic, that will let students take photos of their math homework in order to get the solutions. Google says it wants the Lens-powered technology to help parents and caretakers who are homeschooling, likely for the first time, as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Google's search engine is already crammed with autosuggestions that you can tell are seeking homework answers. When you search for a classic novel, the related searches are always things like “Darcy house name” or “Meaning of dance scene.” Math is harder to Google because of the array of symbols the average person doesn’t know how to type, and people’s math anxiety to begin with makes it more difficult to measuredly seek out what they need.

➡ You love numbers. So do we. Let's nerd out over numbers together.

The specific Google Lens integration doesn’t have a set release date, but Socratic is already available for people to download and use. Using Socratic, students can examine a variety of different subjects, but the robust math functionality really stands out—and took six more months to develop . The app uses artificial intelligence to recommend more and more relevant resources and tutorials to students.

Socratic uses optical character recognition (OCR), whose scope begins with simple scanning of documents using letter “patterns.” Older OCR users may remember the days when “cl” often became “d,” for example, and cheaper or more primitive OCR can still conflate characters this way. More advanced OCR began to consider the same factors as spellcheck or grammar check, using context of entire words or phrases.

Several layers of functionality are happening when a photograph of handwritten math homework is turned into a solution or a resource list. Without peeking behind the scenes of Socratic in particular, we can still explore what’s going on using generalized logic from computing and programming.

First, the OCR is turning handwriting into digitized content—that means addressing a squashed or tilted addition sign, for example, and recognizing that the common “x” used for multiplication by lower level math students is an operator, not a letter or algebra “x.” Then the software must store each part of the mathematical phrase as a separate variable that can be acted on.

In many languages, numbers are “primitive” variables, to use the programming term. Basically, the number can be directly stored as itself without requiring an intermediary bookmark, compared with what’s next: storing the idea of an addition operator. (This is very simplified, and some languages choose to store numbers another way. Large numbers are also handled differently from small ones.)

Once all the pieces are considered separate and usable, the programming must do the intended math to get the correct answer and compare that back to what your photograph actually depicts. Even calculators have surprising computing ability in the form of things like order of operations, but for a long time this was not a given. Today, the absolute cheapest calculator you can buy can do square roots and even store values for you .

If you can't believe Google will just do your kids' homework for them, then you haven't been paying attention to how children have used Google for at least 15 years, let alone graphing calculators that have had capacity to solve at least some functions since 1998 . But adding robust technique and tutorial support is a great new angle that should hopefully help parents and tutors feel empowered to walk kids through any math problems they encounter.

Caroline Delbert is a writer, avid reader, and contributing editor at Pop Mech. She's also an enthusiast of just about everything. Her favorite topics include nuclear energy, cosmology, math of everyday things, and the philosophy of it all. 

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Google Lens' new 'Homework' filter will solve math problems from a photo

You'll be able to take photos of math problems to bring up step-by-step solutions and concept explainers..

Google has been giving students — and their parents — a few helpful tools to make studying from home a bit easier. Back in May, it launched an augmented reality feature within Search that lets you view 3D anatomy models and cellular structures. And soon the tech giant will help you solve math problems simply by taking a photo of them using Google Lens.

The company is using technology from mobile learning app Socratic, which it acquired last year, to power the upcoming Lens feature. When it arrives, all you’ll need to do is snap a pic of your study material and then highlight an equation or a particular problem you can’t seem to solve to get quick access to step-by-step guides and detailed explainers. The idea is to make it easy to look up mathematical concepts giving you trouble, since you need to be able to understand them to be able to apply them. Google didn’t say when the Lens feature will roll out, but Socratic itself is available as standalone apps for iOS and Android.

In addition, Google has also announced that Search now has nearly 100 STEM-related 3D objects you can explore. If you search for “Quantum mechanical model,” for instance, you’ll be able to observe a 3D atom model superimposed against your environment. Jennifer Holland, Google’s Director of Program Management for Education, has also highlighted other tools that can help students who need to stay home due to the pandemic. She touched upon Read Along, which could foster kids’ love for reading, Google Meet’s live caption and a smart speaker feature called Family Bell that can keep you on track by announcing when it's time to start an online class and when it’s time to take a break.

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How to Solve Math Problems using Google Lens

Google Lens back when launched in 2017, was only available for Pixel devices. However, down the road, Google made it available for everybody and it took people by a storm. Google Lens never failed to awestruck its regular users with the things it could do, and always kept geeks busy to take a peek under its hood.

Even today, no other application can come close to Google Lens in terms of functionality, integration, and ease of use. With Google Lens, Google has been able to nail this holy trinity down to pure perfection.

Well, gone are the days when you had to call your over-achieving friend to help you with your math homework. This is 2021, and with Google Lens adding one more amazing feature to its arsenal, will now also help you solve your math problems. Sounds surreal? Take a quick glance down below to know more about it!

Opening Google Lens on your Mobile

There are a plethora of ways to access Google Lens on Android devices. Let’s check them out first.

On Android Devices

You can access the Google Lens with your native camera as well. Open the camera app on your device and either tap on the ‘Google Lens’ icon or tap and hold on the viewfinder for few seconds to open Google Lens.

If your device does not support Google Lens in your native camera app, you can bring up Google Assistant by long-pressing the power button of your device. Then, tap on the ‘Google Lens’ icon from the bottom of your screen.

Alternatively, if you don’t want to use Google Assistant or don’t have access to it. You can head to the Google application and tap on the ‘Camera’ icon situated on the right side of the search bar to access ‘Google Lens’.

On iOS Devices

Though Android devices have a great many ways to access Google Lens. The same cannot be said for iOS devices.

The only way to access Google Lens on an iOS device is through the Google application. First, locate and tap on the Google application from the home screen of your device.

Next, tap on the ‘Camera’ icon to access Google Lens.

Solve Math Problem using Google Lens

Once Google Lens is open on your device, swipe to the ‘Homework’ tab from the bottom Ribbon.

After that, position your math problem in such a way that it is inside the brackets displayed on the screen. Next, click a picture using the ‘Camera’ button.

It will take Google Lens a minute to look for the solution. Once done, it’ll show you a card in the lower section of the screen displaying the recognized formula. Now, swipe up from the center of the card to reveal the solution.

Google Lens will provide you with the steps to solve the problem, using all the methods applicable to the question. It will also display the final value of the solution, should you only need the final answer.

To reveal the steps to solve the equation, tap on any method.

Google Lens will provide a view of all the major steps to solve the problem. To get a comprehensive view of a particular step, tap on the ‘inverted carat’ icon (downward arrow).

You can also switch between methods to view the solution. To switch, tap on the name of other method, located on the top section of screen.

For some complex math problems. Google Lens might not show you a direct solution. However, it will show you related results from all around the web.

As you can notice in the picture below, Google Lens could not show a direct solution for an integral of tan 2 x. However, it does provide a link to the solution available on ‘Wolfram|Alpha’. Tap on the website name to jump to the solution.

You can also scroll down further to find more related articles to the problem.

Now that you don’t need help from your friend to solve your math problems. You better finish your work fast!

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