[Blindmath] Performing calculations as a blind students, tips, tricks and advice for the NFB Youth Slam

[David Andrews]

While I am a big proponent of the slate and stylus, and not a big 
Math person, I will say that generally it doesn't work well for 
Math.  This is because you write down, and turn over to read.  The 
advantage of pencil and paper, and the Braille Writer is that you 
immediately see/feel what you put down, and spacing allows you to 
establish and examine relationships.  This is much more cumbersome, 
if not impossible with the slate.

However, I am not a Mathematician, so may be missing something.

Dave

At 01:42 PM 7/13/2011, you wrote:
>I noticed that no one mentioned using a slate and stylus.  Wouldn't that be
>most like using pencil and paper? I'm far from being a high school student
>but, like the students Steve mentioned, I still find that sketching out a
>rough solution on pencil and paper is often the best way for me to start
>making progress on solving a problem.
>
>I'm also a big fan of working things out with Fortran pseudo-code or
>something similar so I can use as many intermediate variables as desired in
>order to not have to rewrite complex expressions.  This strategy also makes
>it possible to minimize the amount of change going from one step to the next
>which has the advantage of reducing the amount of information I have to keep
>track of mentally.
>
>Susan