[Blindmath] Pascal's Triangle in Braille?

[Alexa Schriempf]

The embosser we have is: Braille Express with Duxbury 11.1

Also have a raised line drawing kit, cardboard and puffy paint, and a
raised line heat printer (I don't know the name, it's old, and can do only
11.5 by 8).

My current solution is to supply the student with the braille numbers in
the rough triangle pattern, as already described in my original email;
today I will follow up with a depiction of the honeycomb nature of the
triangle using the heat printer. The cells however will be empty and the
student will have to go into cognitive overdrive to recall the numbers from
the braille handout, while interacting with the honeycomb tactile graphic.

Unfortunately, this is for a college math class and the professor is going
all the way down to row 13 -- the entire triangle from Row 0 to 13 in other
words. I was able to get to row 7 pretty well. After that, the pattern
shifts too much and my next option is to do is cell by hand with a braille
label maker, puffy paint, or cutting up each number out of each row from
the Express output.

I imagine that because we don't have a Tiger, you won't be able to help us!
But thank you so much for the offer!

-Alexa


On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 9:42 AM, Laura Nelson <nels7075 at umn.edu> wrote:

> If this indeed does not exist I may be able to generate this diagram using
> LaTeX to make a PDF with braille that will be printable with an embosser
> like the Tiger Cub.  I would need to know what type of embosser you are
> using to make sure the page dimensions and Braille font are correct.
>
> How much of the triangle do you need to depict? Would going down to the
> 5th row be adequate?
>
> Laura Nelson
> Senior Access Assistant
> University of Minnesota
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 9:15 PM, Alexa Schriempf via Blindmath <
> blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>
>> Dear Listers:
>>
>> Today I made a Braille version of Pascal's triangle for a student.
>> Needless
>> to say, because I could not adjust the font size of the Braille, and
>> because our paper is 11 inches wide, I had some issues with recreating it
>> with Duxbury and our embosser.
>>
>> Pascal's Triangle is a very specific pattern of numbers, and the
>> orientation of the numbers is carefully placed in a honeycomb pattern. To
>> make 4 digit numbers fit in the honeycomb slot of the same size that holds
>> a 1 digit number, typical images of Pascal's triangle simply use a smaller
>> font size. This does not work when using Braille of course.
>>
>> I tried to put this in a table, but the table cells need to be staggered.
>> In the end, I I simply printed out each row and cut the rows into strips,
>> taped the strips together where needed, and then glued the whole thing to
>> cardboard.
>>
>> However, while this will work for understanding some of the basics, it
>> won't help where it's necessary to see how the numbers align physically on
>> the paper because the inability to change the size and spacing of Braille
>> dots means that I can't fit a four digit number to fit underneath a 2
>> digit
>> number.
>>
>> Surely, this learning object must already exist in Braille someplace?
>> Please advise.
>>
>> Thank you so much!
>> Alexa
>> --
>> Alexa Schriempf, Access Tech Consultant
>> Office for Disability Services
>> Teaching and Learning with Technology: Accessibility Group
>> Adaptive Technology Services, University Libraries
>> Penn State
>> https://sites.psu.edu/aschriempf/
>> http://equity.psu.edu/ods
>> http://tlt.its.psu.edu/
>> http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/adaptivetechnologies.html
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>
>


-- 
Alexa Schriempf, Access Tech Consultant
Office for Disability Services
Teaching and Learning with Technology: Accessibility Group
Adaptive Technology Services, University Libraries
Penn State
https://sites.psu.edu/aschriempf/
http://equity.psu.edu/ods
http://tlt.its.psu.edu/
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/adaptivetechnologies.html