Complexity Math in PDF and ASCII Notation (Fluff, Long)
- From: Veli-Pekka Tätilä <vtatila@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2007 01:01:10 +0300
Hi list,
I'm now on a course that's about algorithms, data structures and
temporal complexity, for the most part. lite math, intuition and
analysis of code rather than any actual programming tasks, per se. ONce
again, I've hit the usual snag of notation, so here are some questions
about math:
The slides are PDf files produced by Distiller from PowerPpoint Slides,
arrgh. In them the math is seriously whacky. On exporting to plain text
using Acrobat or Xpdf, both left out various critical math signs such as
greater than or is in set. Using Acrobat Reader 8 and Dolphin Supernova
8 beta the situation is not much better. There are symbols that look
like set theory symbols but it appears their actual code points don't
match, in stead Sn reads something like pounds, for instance, even
though I know for certain that is not what the symbol on screen looks
like. Is there any accessible way to deal with these PDfs? Has anyone
had similar experiences and could share workarounds? This is in Finnish,
and the math is near the end, but here is a sample document:
http://www.tol.oulu.fi/kurssit/811386A/Luennot/Alg_Johdanto_kalvot.pdf
The book we use is Introduction to ALgorithms, the 2001 edition.
I'm sure I'll be able to get the originals for the lecture notes but
they are power point, so might not be that good to begin with. Even if
LaTEX was used, as in another math oriented computing course I tried, I
had a hard time with that, too. Mostly due to the math itself, but one
still has to know the notation, too and I have never studied LaTEX,
although would like to mainly for writing articles and maintainging
references with ease, but hey, that's OT.
Nested parens and the greek letters make things all the more harder,
though, as far as symbols go. Doable, sure, but not nice and or easy,
even if I was a math whiz, and I assure you I am not. I genuinely like
programming but I have never truely gotten into higher math, higher than
say logarithms or simple derivatives. I kinda like math and have a deep
appreciation for some of the results and people I know who know it well,
but somehow feel I have a hard time coping with very abstract
definitions. Part of that is just me, part is practice and one important
portion of that is notation, thus my questions. I still wish I knew
enough to be able to do audio DSP some day since I'm an analog synth
buff, too. But the filter math there is way beyond me and again OT.
Sorry for these tangents, I'm typing this late at night and don't feel
like cutting, <smile>.
Anyway, back to notation, my other question is, how do you people deal
with the set theory symbols, logic and other basic math signs? So far.
as in a previous course on logic, I've used operators from programming
languages and the HTMl 4.0 entity names with relative success. Are there
better textual notations and on-line references for picking them up?
What does Mathematica use? How is Math ML like?
I wish semi seriously that there would be a math notation that's as
speech friendly as SQl or Ruby is compared to obfuscated C and Perl
JAPHs with speech, to draw bad programming analogies, <grin>. I'm still
a fan of Ruby, SQL, and APple script on syntax grounds alone which is
quite telling. I know this doesn't matter to everyone that much but when
ever I can speech read code that sounds like Good English, I think, now
this is easy to follow, and elegant, to.
--
With kind regards Veli-Pekka Tätilä (vtatila@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
Accessibility, game music, synthesizers and programming:
http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila
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