Use ChatGPT to do Calculations on Data Elements
February 14, 2026 Issue # 38
AI tools including ChatGPT can do calculations on data elements, giving you the result and showing you the formulas it wrote for you. You no longer have to remember formulas from college math or look them up.
For example, your investment ago grew to a particular amount in a specific time frame. You would like to calculate annual rate of return taking compounding into affect.
Suppose you actively invest $1000 in a account and take some risk. You make many stock option trades which result in many small gains that exceed the losing trades. Within 1 1/2 years your account grows to $4000. It is easy to see that your money grew 4 times, which is 300%. You reinvested gains and did not withdraw anything. You would like to know both your annual and weekly rates of return. The calculation involves taking into account compounding which increases the complexity of finding the result.
Disclaimer: This result from many shot-term trades in a 1 1/2 year period is not typical, but has happened. This article shows you how to determine annual rate of return from an investment, whether large or small. This article is not investment advice, but shows you how to do financial calculations using an AI tool.
Simply ask ChatGPT “If $1000 grows to $4000 in 1 1/2 years, what is the annualized rate of return?”
ChatGPT gives you the result and shows how it was calculated. You gave three data points: initial amount, ending amount and time period. It will give you both a weekly and annual return using weekly compounding. (I asked for weekly compounding.) If you would like to see the result without reading through all of the explanations, the results are bold and in a larger font size.
ChatGPT said