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Prompt Engineering Guide For Students

The document is a guide on prompt engineering, emphasizing the importance of crafting specific and clear prompts for effective AI interactions. It outlines key elements of good prompts, various techniques for enhancing AI responses, and provides examples contrasting weak and strong prompts. The guide aims to help students master AI interactions to improve efficiency, accuracy, and understanding in their studies.

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sonupranjal333
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16 views5 pages

Prompt Engineering Guide For Students

The document is a guide on prompt engineering, emphasizing the importance of crafting specific and clear prompts for effective AI interactions. It outlines key elements of good prompts, various techniques for enhancing AI responses, and provides examples contrasting weak and strong prompts. The guide aims to help students master AI interactions to improve efficiency, accuracy, and understanding in their studies.

Uploaded by

sonupranjal333
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Prompt Engineering Guide for

Students​
Mastering AI Interactions for Maximum Efficiency &
Accuracy

SECTION 1: Prompt Engineering Fundamentals & Best Practices

1.1 What is Prompt Engineering?


Prompt Engineering is the process of designing clear, specific, and intentional instructions,
known as prompts, to communicate effectively with AI models like ChatGPT. These prompts
guide the AI to generate accurate, useful, and relevant responses.

It’s like asking the right question in the right way to get the best answer from a very smart
assistant.

📌 Why Does Prompt Engineering Matter?


●​ 🎯 Precision: Well-crafted prompts lead to more accurate, subject-specific responses
●​ ⏱️ Efficiency: Saves time by reducing vague or irrelevant outputs.
●​ 📚 Depth: Encourages deeper understanding by breaking down complex concepts.
●​ 🧠 Creativity: Stimulates idea generation, project support, and resolution of doubts.
●​ 🎓 Self-study aid: Turns AI into a study buddy or tutor with specific roles and tasks.

1.2 Key Elements of a Good Prompt

✅ Context: Provide background information or specify the domain. ✅ Role: Assign a role to
the AI (e.g., "You are a senior software developer..."). ✅ Constraints: Set word limits, output
format, and tone. ✅ Task: Clearly define what needs to be done. ✅ Examples: Provide
samples to guide AI responses.

1.3 Commonly Asked Questions by CS Students


●​ Data Structures & Algorithms (DSA)
●​ Artificial Intelligence (AI)
●​ Java Programming
●​ Exam Preparation & Time Management

Let’s dive deep into the prompt engineering fundamentals and understand them through some
examples.

SECTION 2: Tasks with Prompts, Techniques & Outcomes

2.1 Context & Constraint + Role Based Prompting


Context and Constraint: Using specific background information (context) and clear boundaries
(constraints) to guide AI.​
Role-Based: Assigning a Specific Role to AI.

📌 Example: Weak vs. Strong Prompt


🔴 Weak: "Explain Binary Tree."
🟢 Strong: "You're a DSA tutor. Explain binary trees to a second-year CS student with basic
C++ knowledge. Use simple language, include a diagram in text, and give 2 real-life analogies
and 1 code snippet in C++."

Tips:

✅ Be specific about your knowledge level


✅ Don’t forget to explain context and constraints for effective output, and reduce ambiguity.
✅ Assign AI Role to set the tone and enhance engagement
❌ Don’t just say "explain this."

2.2 Chain of Thought Prompting + Role-Based


Instructing AI to explain its reasoning step by step before providing the final answer.

📌 Example: Weak vs. Strong Prompt


🔴 Weak: "What is wrong with my code?"
🟢 Strong: "Here is a Java Code Snippet throwing a segmentation error. Consider yourself a
senior Java Developer. Debug this code step by step: 1. Analyze the code; 2. Mention the code
error; 3. Provide an appropriate solution to the error."
Tips:

✅ Ask AI for step-by-step reasoning


✅ Don’t forget to explain context and constraints for effective output, and reduce ambiguity.
✅ Use a clear role to set the tone and enhance the engagement of AI in generating output.
❌ Don’t just say “solve the problem”.

2.3 Role-Based Prompting+Tree of Thought Prompting


Tree of Thought: Encouraging AI to think on multiple dimensions before arriving at a final
answer.

📌Example: Weak vs. Strong Prompt


🔴 Weak Prompt: "Explain to me three sorting algorithms."
🟢 Strong Prompt: "Suppose you are a DSA Professor with 10 years of experience. Please
explain the insertion, selection, and bubble sorting algorithms to me. Find the best algorithm
from the viewpoint of time and space complexity."

Tips:

✅ Provide a no. of particular dimensions to AI to think in multiple dimensions


✅ Don't forget to ask for the best output
✅ Don't forget to include a comparison variable for optimal output.
❌ Don't just say "Explain to me different….."

2.4 Self-Consistency Prompting


Requesting multiple independent responses to the same prompt and selecting the most
appropriate and consistent answer.

📌 Example: Weak vs. Strong Prompt


🔴 Weak Prompt: "Explain to me three hashing techniques for an array."
🟢 Strong Prompt: "Explain to me three hashing techniques for an array having repeating
entries for elements. Find the best techniques out of these."

Tips:

✅ Don't forget to put constraints(no. of outputs).


✅ Don't forget to ask for a comparison for the best output.

2.4 Re-Act(Reason + Act) Prompting


Involves AI to reason through a problem, and act by providing a step-by-step answer, and reflect
to ensure completeness.

📌 Example: Weak vs. Strong Prompt


🔴 Weak Prompt: "Which data structure is used for a real-time task scheduler?"
🟢 Strong Prompt: "You are a systems designer. Let’s decide the best data structure for a
real-time task scheduler. For each option, first reason about its pros and cons based on time
complexity and use case, then act by choosing whether to accept it or reject it. Repeat this
process until a final decision is made."

TIps:

✅ Request analogies or grid/text visuals


✅ Encourage reasoning steps (ReAct)
❌ Avoid open-ended “tell me everything” requests

2.5 Multimodal Prompting


Combining multiple input formats (text, images, audio, etc.) in one prompt.

📌 Example: Weak vs. Strong Prompt


🔴 Weak Prompt: "Explain to me this image."
🟢 Strong Prompt: "Explain to me this diagram of computer architecture. Provide me with the
difference between the new computer and this one."

Tips:

✅ Don't forget to include all types of formats required for optimal output.
✅ Include at least one format(image, audio, video) along with the text prompt.
❌ Don't just say, "Explain this image."

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