Academic Year 2024-2025 enrollment is now open! Summer 2024 classes are filling up fast! VIEW COURSES
In-Person Summer and Academic Year Courses for Grades 1–12
In advanced math, science, and language arts courses, students find lifelong friends, mentors, and role models as they reach new heights together. explore our course offerings for grades 1–12..
ABOUT AOPS ACADEMY
Rigorous Curriculum and an Unforgettable Experience
Since 1993, Art of Problem Solving has prepared hundreds of thousands of motivated students in grades 2–12 for college and career success. Through our innovative approach, students build a problem-solving foundation, an unparalleled skill set that helps them overcome obstacles in school and in life.
Our Lexington Location
We’re right in your neighborhood! Our campus location is at 1088 Lexington St., Waltham, MA 02451.
A Problem-Solving Curriculum
Our curriculum is rigorous — it's built to be. If students never feel challenged, they’re not getting to the boundaries of what’s possible. By solving new and complex problems, AoPS students are inspired to expand to their fullest academic potential.
If you’re looking for a challenging, interactive environment where your student will build the skill stack to succeed in school and beyond, you'll find it at AoPS Academy Lexington!
Our family regularly talks about AoPS. We try to think about how our life would be different without you all. What if my daughter hadn't learned to love math? What if she never experienced being pushed to her limits? Overcoming failure? She wouldn't be who she is. And she is AWESOME! A very proud mom here. We are so fortunate that we found AoPS Academy. I credit AoPS for much of her confidence.
AoPS Academy parent to 16-year-old engineering major at UW and future cancer researcher
Academic Year 2024-2025 enrollment is now open! Summer 2024 classes are filling up fast! VIEW COURSES
In-Person Summer and Academic Year Courses for Grades 1–12
In advanced math, science, and language arts courses, students find lifelong friends, mentors, and role models as they reach new heights together. explore our course offerings for grades 1–12..
ABOUT AOPS ACADEMY
Rigorous Curriculum and an Unforgettable Experience
Since 1993, Art of Problem Solving has prepared hundreds of thousands of motivated students in grades 2–12 for college and career success. Through our innovative approach, students build a problem-solving foundation, an unparalleled skill set that helps them overcome obstacles in school and in life.
Our Princeton Location
We’re right in your neighborhood! Our campus location is at 100 Campus Drive, Ste 103, Princeton, NJ 08540.
A Problem-Solving Curriculum
Our curriculum is rigorous — it's built to be. If students never feel challenged, they’re not getting to the boundaries of what’s possible. By solving new and complex problems, AoPS students are inspired to expand to their fullest academic potential.
If you’re looking for a challenging, interactive environment where your student will build the skill stack to succeed in school and beyond, you'll find it at AoPS Academy Princeton!
Our family regularly talks about AoPS. We try to think about how our life would be different without you all. What if my daughter hadn't learned to love math? What if she never experienced being pushed to her limits? Overcoming failure? She wouldn't be who she is. And she is AWESOME! A very proud mom here. We are so fortunate that we found AoPS Academy. I credit AoPS for much of her confidence.
AoPS Academy parent to 16-year-old engineering major at UW and future cancer researcher
Honors Language Arts 3A and 3B together build the foundations that third graders (ages 8-10) need to become independent problem solvers in language arts.
Live instructors help students develop writing and critical thinking skills and appreciation of language arts.
View the course syllabus for full class information and a list of topics.
This course is recommended for students entering Grade 3. We recommend students enroll in Language Arts courses at grade level.
Each 18-week term will cover 2 units, with each unit featuring a long-term project that integrates a variety of reading, writing, critical thinking, and grammar skills.
- Narratives : Students read Greek myths and create their own mythological stories.
- Persuasive Nonfiction : Students learn about classical philosophy while writing their own testimony to deliver at the trial of Socrates.
- Drama : Students are introduced to Greek theater, which becomes a platform for writing and staging their own plays.
- Epics : Students embark on Homer's Odyssey, reading adaptations of the original stories while developing sentence-building, research, and narrative writing skills.
Students must purchase the required books before the start of the course.
Our instructors hold classes virtually, in a small-sized (10-16 students) videoconferencing classroom.
Students should expect to spend about 60-90 minutes on homework every week. Homework will include practicing skills learned in class through short answer questions, long-term writing assignments connected to the unit project, and assigned reading in one of the four quarterly textbooks.
Visit our tuition page to learn more about our drop and refund policies.
Each course runs for 18 weeks and offers two timing formats. Both cover the same course material.
- One 105-minute lesson per week, or
- Two 55-minute lessons per week
Join us at our upcoming Open House virtually or in-person to learn more about AoPS Irvine!
Academic Year 2024-2025 enrollment is now open! Summer 2024 classes are filling up fast! VIEW COURSES
In-Person Summer and Academic Year Courses for Grades 1–12
In advanced math, science, and language arts courses, students find lifelong friends, mentors, and role models as they reach new heights together. explore our course offerings for grades 1–12..
ABOUT AOPS ACADEMY
Rigorous Curriculum and an Unforgettable Experience
Since 1993, Art of Problem Solving has prepared hundreds of thousands of motivated students in grades 2–12 for college and career success. Through our innovative approach, students build a problem-solving foundation, an unparalleled skill set that helps them overcome obstacles in school and in life.
Our Irvine Location
We’re right in your neighborhood! Our campus location is at 4010 Barranca Pkwy, Suite 220, Irvine, CA 92604.
A Problem-Solving Curriculum
Our curriculum is rigorous — it's built to be. If students never feel challenged, they’re not getting to the boundaries of what’s possible. By solving new and complex problems, AoPS students are inspired to expand to their fullest academic potential.
If you’re looking for a challenging, interactive environment where your student will build the skill stack to succeed in school and beyond, you'll find it at AoPS Academy Irvine!
Our family regularly talks about AoPS. We try to think about how our life would be different without you all. What if my daughter hadn't learned to love math? What if she never experienced being pushed to her limits? Overcoming failure? She wouldn't be who she is. And she is AWESOME! A very proud mom here. We are so fortunate that we found AoPS Academy. I credit AoPS for much of her confidence.
AoPS Academy parent to 16-year-old engineering major at UW and future cancer researcher
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A.I.’s Black Boxes Just Got a Little Less Mysterious
Researchers at the A.I. company Anthropic claim to have found clues about the inner workings of large language models, possibly helping to prevent their misuse and to curb their potential threats.
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By Kevin Roose
Reporting from San Francisco
One of the weirder, more unnerving things about today’s leading artificial intelligence systems is that nobody — not even the people who build them — really knows how the systems work.
That’s because large language models, the type of A.I. systems that power ChatGPT and other popular chatbots, are not programmed line by line by human engineers, as conventional computer programs are.
Instead, these systems essentially learn on their own, by ingesting vast amounts of data and identifying patterns and relationships in language, then using that knowledge to predict the next words in a sequence.
One consequence of building A.I. systems this way is that it’s difficult to reverse-engineer them or to fix problems by identifying specific bugs in the code. Right now, if a user types “Which American city has the best food?” and a chatbot responds with “Tokyo,” there’s no real way of understanding why the model made that error, or why the next person who asks may receive a different answer.
And when large language models do misbehave or go off the rails, nobody can really explain why. (I encountered this problem last year when a Bing chatbot acted in an unhinged way during an interaction with me. Not even top executives at Microsoft could tell me with any certainty what had gone wrong.)
The inscrutability of large language models is not just an annoyance but a major reason some researchers fear that powerful A.I. systems could eventually become a threat to humanity.
After all, if we can’t understand what’s happening inside these models, how will we know if they can be used to create novel bioweapons, spread political propaganda or write malicious computer code for cyberattacks? If powerful A.I. systems start to disobey or deceive us, how can we stop them if we can’t understand what’s causing that behavior in the first place?
To address these problems, a small subfield of A.I. research known as “mechanistic interpretability” has spent years trying to peer inside the guts of A.I. language models. The work has been slow going, and progress has been incremental.
There has also been growing resistance to the idea that A.I. systems pose much risk at all. Last week, two senior safety researchers at OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, left the company amid conflict with executives about whether the company was doing enough to make its products safe.
But this week, a team of researchers at the A.I. company Anthropic announced what they called a major breakthrough — one they hope will give us the ability to understand more about how A.I. language models actually work, and to possibly prevent them from becoming harmful.
The team summarized its findings in a blog post called “ Mapping the Mind of a Large Language Model .”
The researchers looked inside one of Anthropic’s A.I. models — Claude 3 Sonnet, a version of the company’s Claude 3 language model — and used a technique known as “dictionary learning” to uncover patterns in how combinations of neurons, the mathematical units inside the A.I. model, were activated when Claude was prompted to talk about certain topics. They identified roughly 10 million of these patterns, which they call “features.”
They found that one feature, for example, was active whenever Claude was asked to talk about San Francisco. Other features were active whenever topics like immunology or specific scientific terms, such as the chemical element lithium, were mentioned. And some features were linked to more abstract concepts, like deception or gender bias.
They also found that manually turning certain features on or off could change how the A.I. system behaved, or could get the system to even break its own rules.
For example, they discovered that if they forced a feature linked to the concept of sycophancy to activate more strongly, Claude would respond with flowery, over-the-top praise for the user, including in situations where flattery was inappropriate.
Chris Olah, who led the Anthropic interpretability research team, said in an interview that these findings could allow A.I. companies to control their models more effectively.
“We’re discovering features that may shed light on concerns about bias, safety risks and autonomy,” he said. “I’m feeling really excited that we might be able to turn these controversial questions that people argue about into things we can actually have more productive discourse on.”
Other researchers have found similar phenomena in small- and medium-size language models. But Anthropic’s team is among the first to apply these techniques to a full-size model.
Jacob Andreas, an associate professor of computer science at M.I.T., who reviewed a summary of Anthropic’s research, characterized it as a hopeful sign that large-scale interpretability might be possible.
“In the same way that understanding basic things about how people work has helped us cure diseases, understanding how these models work will both let us recognize when things are about to go wrong and let us build better tools for controlling them,” he said.
Mr. Olah, the Anthropic research leader, cautioned that while the new findings represented important progress, A.I. interpretability was still far from a solved problem.
For starters, he said, the largest A.I. models most likely contain billions of features representing distinct concepts — many more than the 10 million or so features that Anthropic’s team claims to have discovered. Finding them all would require enormous amounts of computing power and would be too costly for all but the richest A.I. companies to attempt.
Even if researchers were to identify every feature in a large A.I. model, they would still need more information to understand the full inner workings of the model. There is also no guarantee that A.I. companies would act to make their systems safer.
Still, Mr. Olah said, even prying open these A.I. black boxes a little bit could allow companies, regulators and the general public to feel more confident that these systems can be controlled.
“There are lots of other challenges ahead of us, but the thing that seemed scariest no longer seems like a roadblock,” he said.
Kevin Roose is a Times technology columnist and a host of the podcast " Hard Fork ." More about Kevin Roose
Explore Our Coverage of Artificial Intelligence
News and Analysis
Google appears to have rolled back its new A.I. Overviews after the technology produced a litany of untruths and errors.
OpenAI said that it has begun training a new flagship A.I. model that would succeed the GPT-4 technology that drives its popular online chatbot, ChatGPT.
Elon Musk’s A.I. company, xAI, said that it had raised $6 billion , helping to close the funding gap with OpenAI, Anthropic and other rivals.
The Age of A.I.
After some trying years during which Mark Zuckerberg could do little right, many developers and technologists have embraced the Meta chief as their champion of “open-source” A.I.
D’Youville University in Buffalo had an A.I. robot speak at its commencement . Not everyone was happy about it.
A new program, backed by Cornell Tech, M.I.T. and U.C.L.A., helps prepare lower-income, Latina and Black female computing majors for A.I. careers.
Academic Year 2024-2025 enrollment is now open! Summer 2024 classes are filling up fast! VIEW COURSES
In-Person Summer and Academic Year Courses for Grades 1–12
In advanced math, science, and language arts courses, students find lifelong friends, mentors, and role models as they reach new heights together. explore our course offerings for grades 1–12..
ABOUT AOPS ACADEMY
Rigorous Curriculum and an Unforgettable Experience
Since 1993, Art of Problem Solving has prepared hundreds of thousands of motivated students in grades 2–12 for college and career success. Through our innovative approach, students build a problem-solving foundation, an unparalleled skill set that helps them overcome obstacles in school and in life.
Our Bellevue Location
We’re right in your neighborhood! Our campus location is at 1750 112th Ave NE, Suite B-100, Bellevue, WA 98004.
A Problem-Solving Curriculum
Our curriculum is rigorous — it's built to be. If students never feel challenged, they’re not getting to the boundaries of what’s possible. By solving new and complex problems, AoPS students are inspired to expand to their fullest academic potential.
If you’re looking for a challenging, interactive environment where your student will build the skill stack to succeed in school and beyond, you'll find it at AoPS Academy Bellevue!
Our family regularly talks about AoPS. We try to think about how our life would be different without you all. What if my daughter hadn't learned to love math? What if she never experienced being pushed to her limits? Overcoming failure? She wouldn't be who she is. And she is AWESOME! A very proud mom here. We are so fortunate that we found AoPS Academy. I credit AoPS for much of her confidence.
AoPS Academy parent to 16-year-old engineering major at UW and future cancer researcher
In-Person Summer and Academic Year Courses for Grades 1–12
In advanced math, science, and language arts courses, students find lifelong friends, mentors, and role models as they reach new heights together. explore our course offerings for grades 1–12..
ABOUT AOPS ACADEMY
Rigorous Curriculum and an Unforgettable Experience
Since 1993, Art of Problem Solving has prepared hundreds of thousands of motivated students in grades 2–12 for college and career success. Through our innovative approach, students build a problem-solving foundation, an unparalleled skill set that helps them overcome obstacles in school and in life.
Our Vienna Location
We’re right in your neighborhood! Our campus location is at 8381 Old Courthouse Rd, Ste 130, Vienna, VA 22182.
A Problem-Solving Curriculum
Our curriculum is rigorous — it's built to be. If students never feel challenged, they’re not getting to the boundaries of what’s possible. By solving new and complex problems, AoPS students are inspired to expand to their fullest academic potential.
If you’re looking for a challenging, interactive environment where your student will build the skill stack to succeed in school and beyond, you'll find it at AoPS Academy Vienna!
Our family regularly talks about AoPS. We try to think about how our life would be different without you all. What if my daughter hadn't learned to love math? What if she never experienced being pushed to her limits? Overcoming failure? She wouldn't be who she is. And she is AWESOME! A very proud mom here. We are so fortunate that we found AoPS Academy. I credit AoPS for much of her confidence.
AoPS Academy parent to 16-year-old engineering major at UW and future cancer researcher
In-Person Summer and Academic Year Courses for Grades 1–12
In advanced math, science, and language arts courses, students find lifelong friends, mentors, and role models as they reach new heights together. explore our course offerings for grades 1–12..
ABOUT AOPS ACADEMY
Rigorous Curriculum and an Unforgettable Experience
Since 1993, Art of Problem Solving has prepared hundreds of thousands of motivated students in grades 2–12 for college and career success. Through our innovative approach, students build a problem-solving foundation, an unparalleled skill set that helps them overcome obstacles in school and in life.
Our Santa Clara/Cupertino Location
We’re right in your neighborhood! Our campus location is at 777 Lawrence Expressway, Suite 28, Santa Clara, CA 95051.
A Problem-Solving Curriculum
Our curriculum is rigorous — it's built to be. If students never feel challenged, they’re not getting to the boundaries of what’s possible. By solving new and complex problems, AoPS students are inspired to expand to their fullest academic potential.
If you’re looking for a challenging, interactive environment where your student will build the skill stack to succeed in school and beyond, you'll find it at AoPS Academy Santa Clara/Cupertino!
Our family regularly talks about AoPS. We try to think about how our life would be different without you all. What if my daughter hadn't learned to love math? What if she never experienced being pushed to her limits? Overcoming failure? She wouldn't be who she is. And she is AWESOME! A very proud mom here. We are so fortunate that we found AoPS Academy. I credit AoPS for much of her confidence.
AoPS Academy parent to 16-year-old engineering major at UW and future cancer researcher
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Good language arts problems come from a process of recognizing and rooting out this assumption at every turn. 2. Let reading, writing, grammar, and vocabulary work together. We often think of language arts as a set of subjects, each with its own chunk of class time.
Math classes and language arts classes for students grades 2-12 after school, weekends, and summer, with locations all over the US. Art of Problem Solving AoPS Online. ... Art of Problem Solving has been a leader in math education for high-performing students since 1993. We launched AoPS Academy in 2016 to bring our rigorous curriculum and ...
Live virtual math and language arts classes for motivated students in elementary and middle school. Art of Problem Solving AoPS Online. Math texts, online classes, ... Since 1993, Art of Problem Solving has helped train the next generation of intellectual leaders. Hundreds of thousands of our students have gone on to attend prestigious ...
Below are the courses we offer for high-performing students in mathematics, language arts, and science in our physical campus locations. We offer courses during the academic year and during the summer. Click on any course for more information about that course, and read About AoPS Academy to learn more about our educational philosophy.
Math classes and language arts classes for Lexington students grades 2-12 after school, on weekends, and in the summer. Art of Problem Solving ... Since 1993, Art of Problem Solving has prepared hundreds of thousands of motivated students in grades 2-12 for college and career success. Through our innovative approach, students build a problem ...
Honors Language Arts 6A and 6B together prepare sixth graders (ages 11-12) for an advanced middle school language arts curriculum. Live instructors help students develop writing and critical thinking skills and appreciation of language arts. View the course syllabus for full class information and a list of topics. Year-Round. 18 weeks. ~2 hours.
Math classes and language arts classes for students grades 2-12 after school, weekends, and summer, with locations all over the US. Art of Problem Solving AoPS Online. Math texts, online classes, and more for students in grades 5-12. ... and they address authentic scenarios that cultivate problem-solving skills and hone each student's ...
Honors Language Arts 8 challenges eighth grade students (ages 13-16) with an advanced middle school language arts curriculum. Live instructors help students develop writing and critical thinking skills and appreciation of language arts. View the course syllabus for full class information and a list of topics. Year-Round. 36 weeks.
Live virtual math and language arts classes for motivated students in elementary and middle school. Art of Problem Solving AoPS Online. Math texts, online classes, and more for students in grades 5-12. Visit AoPS Online ...
Each unit of Language Arts Level 3 is framed as an overarching language arts problem that students need to solve. In the course of solving this problem, students learn and apply skills across the spectrum of language arts: reading, writing, grammar, vocabulary, interpretation, and critical thinking. Each day of class includes a blend of the ...
AoPS Academy offers small, interactive language arts courses year-round for your motivated student. Our language arts courses encourage students grades 3-10 to push their creative limits. Through live instruction, students gain a toolbox of language resources with which to solve new challenges and think critically about topics that inspire them ...
Advanced math and language arts classes for Princeton students grades 2-12 after school, on weekends, and in the summer. Art of Problem Solving ... Since 1993, Art of Problem Solving has prepared hundreds of thousands of motivated students in grades 2-12 for college and career success. Through our innovative approach, students build a problem ...
Academic Year Language Arts. In the Level 4 course, students examine pivotal moments from American history through the lens of language arts, and come away with a new awareness of the power of writing to shape and reflect history. Students who complete this course will have experience in discerning and utilizing credible sources, presenting ...
About Art of Problem Solving. At Art of Problem Solving, we are training the intellectual leaders of the next generation. We help students develop the problem-solving skills they need to confidently tackle challenging problems—and not only in mathematics. Over time, we've expanded into subjects like physics, programming, and language arts.
Honors Language Arts 3A and 3B together build the foundations that third graders (ages 8-10) need to become independent problem solvers in language arts. Live instructors help students develop writing and critical thinking skills and appreciation of language arts. View the course syllabus for full class information and a list of topics.
Math classes and language arts classes for Irvine students grades 2-12 after school, on weekends, and in the summer. Art of Problem Solving ... Since 1993, Art of Problem Solving has prepared hundreds of thousands of motivated students in grades 2-12 for college and career success. Through our innovative approach, students build a problem ...
Researchers at the A.I. company Anthropic claim to have found clues about the inner workings of large language models, possibly helping to prevent their misuse and to curb their potential threats.
At AoPS, we understand that every student learns a little differently. That's why we've designed our K-12 programs for varied learning preferences, age ranges, difficulty levels and subject matter. We offer four distinct program offerings for students ages 6-18.
AoPS Curriculum. The Art of Problem Solving mathematics curriculum is designed for outstanding math students in grades 5-12. Our texts offer broader, deeper, and more challenging instruction than other curricula. Our Beast Academy elementary school curriculum covers grades 1 through 5. VIEW ALL BOOKS.
Advanced math and language arts classes for Bellevue students grades 2-12 after school, on weekends, and in the summer. Art of Problem Solving ... Since 1993, Art of Problem Solving has prepared hundreds of thousands of motivated students in grades 2-12 for college and career success. Through our innovative approach, students build a problem ...
Advanced math and language arts classes for Vienna students grades 2-12 after school, on weekends, and in the summer. Art of Problem Solving ... Since 1993, Art of Problem Solving has prepared hundreds of thousands of motivated students in grades 2-12 for college and career success. Through our innovative approach, students build a problem ...
Advanced math and language arts classes for Santa Clara/Cupertino students grades 2-12 after school, on weekends, and in the summer. Art of Problem Solving ... Since 1993, Art of Problem Solving has prepared hundreds of thousands of motivated students in grades 2-12 for college and career success. Through our innovative approach, students ...