I have compared Deepseek and ChatGPT, and it seems that Deepseek excels in solving math problems. I provided the same prompt to both tools to evaluate their performance:
“A man is standing on one side of a river, with two parallel banks 10 meters apart. He needs to swim across the river and then run 20 meters along the opposite bank. He swims at a speed of 1 meter per second and runs at a speed of 6 meters per second. Rather than swimming directly perpendicular to the riverbank, which path should he take to minimize his total travel time?”
This problem was originally posed by our Wah Yan Mathematics teacher, Mr. Lai Chun Bong, in 1980. Deepseek applies Snell’s Law of optics, which is the method Mr. Lai suggested. In contrast, ChatGPT employs differentiation. While both methods are valid and lead to the correct answer, Snell’s Law offers a more efficient solution. For this reason, I recommend using Deepseek for solving math problems.