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

[Steve Jacobson]

I used to use the BASIC interpreter to perform calculations in the days of DOS.  I suspect that our approaches are probably seen as old-fashioned now, 
though.  Still, as someone said, there is a lot of flexibility in Excel which is sort of between programming and using a calculator.  I know that others here have 
mentioned the statistical package R.  This is what I was getting at in my note, though, that there are really two different problems to solve.  How does one 
write down and communicate complex equasion solutions and math proofs, and how does one actually perform calculations.  The two are different and the 
tools one might use are different.  I advocated that sometimes using a braille writer and paper is not a bad alternative for solving equasions and that various 
math notation systems need to be investigated if one is going to take a lot of math.  However, to perform statistical or other kinds of calculations, there are 
definitely other alternatives, including the calculators on some note-takers.  This point of there being two separate problems to solve, solving equasions and 
performing calculations, might be a good one and not one that will occur to all students.  I also realize that one can perform calculations using some math 
notation systems as well, but learning a notation system to perform calculations only is probably not worth it given that there are other alternatives.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

On Wed, 13 Jul 2011 17:48:51 -0600, Littlefield, Tyler wrote:

>At least I"m not the only one that does that. I learn something new, 
>then I write a program to solve the equasions. IT's kind of fun and it 
>makes me think about it, and/or do research.
>On 7/13/2011 5:20 PM, Pranav Lal wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I used to do math years ago in highschool and had it for college too. At
>> that time, I used turbo pascal's functions for solving problems. So, my math
>> would be
>> Sin(x)+cos(x)=something. Computer programming really helped me solve math
>> problems for instance, my concept of the use of brackets became very strong
>> after I used them in computer programs. Many times, I would write my own
>> program to solve a class of problem to solidify my understanding.
>>
>> Pranav
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Blindmath mailing list
>> Blindmath at nfbnet.org
>> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for Blindmath:
>> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindmath_nfbnet.org/tyler%40tysdomain.com
>>


>-- 

>Take care,
>Ty
>my website:
>http://tds-solutions.net
>my blog:
>http://tds-solutions.net/blog
>skype: st8amnd127
>My programs don't have bugs; they're randomly added features!


>_______________________________________________
>Blindmath mailing list
>Blindmath at nfbnet.org
>http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath_nfbnet.org
>To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for Blindmath:
>http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindmath_nfbnet.org/steve.jacobson%40visi.com