Basic Equation Solver

A web application that allows users to input a simple equation and receive step-by-step instructions on how to solve it. The application uses PLY for parsing, GPT-3.5 Turbo (ChatGPT) for evaluation, and Flask for the frontend.

How It Works

Parsing Equations

The application uses PLY (Python implementation of lex/yacc) to parse simple math equations into a tuple form (e.g., "-2 + 2x = 4" => ('=', ('+', ('*', 2.0, -1.0), ('*', 2.0, ('variable', 'x'))), 4.0)). This ensures the equations adhere to syntactic and semantic requirements.

Evaluating Expressions

To evaluate the expression (solve for the variable), a single GPT-3.5 Turbo (ChatGPT) API call is used. The prompt is two-shot (two examples of desired behavior) and performs quite well in limited testing. To run the application locally, an OpenAI API key is required.

Frontend

Flask is used to create the basic application frontend.

Run Locally

Requirements

• Python 3
• Flask
• OpenAI

1. Create a virtual environment

python -m venv venv

2. Activate the virtual environment

Activate the virtual environment:

For Windows:

venv\Scripts\activate

For macOS and Linux:

source venv/bin/activate

3. Install Flask

With the virtual environment activated, install Flask and OpenAI API:

pip install Flask 
pip install openai 
pip install ply

4. Add OpenAI API Key

In the EquationEvaluator class, in equation_evaluator.py file

5. Run the application

Start the Flask development server:

flask run

By default, the application will be available at http://127.0.0.1:5000/.

6. Deactivate the virtual environment

When you're done working with the project, deactivate the virtual environment:

deactivate