Same here! Trig was a good example where using the scratch area in my head worked well. I guess I mostly need a new method for better visualizing print equations I might run into in an MIT Astrophysics class I might use as Saturday night entertainment.
Don MarangThere is just so much stuff in the world that, to me, is devoid of any real substance, value, and content that I just try to make sure that I am working on things that matter.
Dean Kamen -------------------------------------------------- From: "Ken Perry" <whistler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 2010 6:11 PM To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>Subject: RE: Screen readers and how to develop them: A historical perspective
Well to tell you the truth while I am 100% blind I still do all my mathvisually. Sound weird? Stick with me. I need to start by telling you how my wife some time finds me leaning way back in my chair looking at the upperleft hand corner of the room while I am coding. You see I visualize myscreen as I use the computer and sometimes my screen in my mind gets reallybig. This may explain some blind piano players waving their head back and forth while playing. At any rate the same kind of thing happens when I am doing complex proofs, differentials, or integrals. I have what I call a visual scratch sheet in my head and can store all kinds of stuff on different parts of it. I even must imagine the shells or curves or vector plots just to be able to understand the math involved. I can do this with math maybe because of my sited back ground in electronics or maybe I wasalways just meant to do math. Maybe I should go back to school and work onhigher math than Calculus I don't know. I like my work now though .Anyway one of the biggest things I think that helped me was the trig class Itook as my second math class in College was with what I would consider a functional autistic teacher. He was the type of guy that could remembereveryone's name in the first day and could do long problems in his head andhe forced us all to do the same. He would even rig problems so that hp 48and Ti 92 and 89 Calculators would not give the right graph unless you knewto zoom certain parts. So he forced us to learn the trig identities byheart to where we knew what we would have if we had Cosign of (x) +1 and wecould do the conversions from one trig statement to another in our heads. No one who left that class I believe could ever fail in higher math. From that point diff's were easy. The first integral that really kicked my ass was the chain rule but after I got a visual picture of what the problem looked like it was just a matter of remembering small bits of numbers. Now I want to go back to my high school years. When I was in algebra inHigh school I never studied and never did my homework. I was too busy with girls, football and wrestling. I passed though because just before a test I would flip through the chapter and read all the examples. From that I wouldnormally get a c or better on the tests. Note my goal was not to get good grades in High school cause I knew I would join the Air force and finally did. So anyway. I am just rambling because you wanted to know how some of uspull it off. Maybe I do things different or maybe I don't but I feel there is a large bit of my visual cortex still being used but now it's more like ascratch sheet. Ken -----Original Message----- From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Don Marang Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 2010 5:54 PM To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Screen readers and how to develop them: A historical perspective Visualizing advanced Math as a blind person has been a mystery to me.Unfortunately, I have not taken the time since becoming blind to understandmethods blind people use. I have a degree in Electrical Engineering and have taken highly advanced math since 6th grade. I have never been superquick at standard memorized tables. I loved concepts and deriving formulas.Complex equations to me were very conceptual and visual. In High School, I would take a few moments to look at a few very complex problems and work outthe full page of details in my head while at swimming practice. I would doCollege work in a very similar manner, except while doing different activities, like washing dishes. Math was the only subject where I found this effective. I have gotten lazy, math wise, and have not involved myself in anything requiring higher math since going blind. Unless you count attempting tomake sense of the seemingly arbitrary amounts of Social Security they claimI owe. I guess the fact I can work difficult problems in my head is promising. What different methods are used to visualize the equations and visual aspects of such concepts. Is a mathematical extension to LeTek the best method? Perhaps I am not the mathematical wiz I used to be, but I should exercise those cells for a change! Don MarangThere is just so much stuff in the world that, to me, is devoid of any real substance, value, and content that I just try to make sure that I am workingon things that matter. Dean Kamen -------------------------------------------------- From: "QuentinC" <quentinc@xxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 2010 10:44 AM To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: Re: Screen readers and how to develop them: A historical perspectiveI definitely think braille is necessary, and amazingly useful, when doingthings like matrices, integrals, and complex derivatives,but there are other approaches to accomplish the same things. Last year, I did linear algebra and analysis only with speech synthesis,using a syntax close to common programming languages, or simplified latex.I think that's mainly a question of preference. Some people prefer readbraille, some others prefer hear speech synthesis, and some are using bothin the same time. It's different ways to get the same information, and everyone use the one which he/she is more comfortable with. We could also discuss different ways to represent something in the space. That's the same: some people prefer touch things, when some others are OK with navigation in a 2D or 3D virtual view divided into cells, or a description of important points with coordinates. __________ View the list's information and change your settings at //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind__________ View the list's information and change your settings at //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind __________ View the list's information and change your settings at //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind
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