[Blindmath] Struggling Mathematics Student

[Joseph Lee]

Hi,
As for Bookshare, I agree to some extent in that most of the books there are
not of high quality (sciences textbooks are not great over there mostly
because equations are removed).
Cheers,
Joseph

-----Original Message-----
From: Blindmath [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Smith,
Andrew via Blindmath
Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2014 6:59 AM
To: Clayton Jacobs; Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
Subject: Re: [Blindmath] Struggling Mathematics Student

Frankly, I would transfer to another school.  It sounds like your
disabilities office and professors do not care at all (or very little), and
this is unacceptable.

For now, I have some questions for you:
Do you have a textbook?  If so, what is the format, i.e braille, etc?
As far as your dysfunctional TI84, if you have a laptop, I highly recommend
you try Sage (get it from sage math.org).  It can do just about anything you
can think of, and I have found it to be quite accessible from the command
line.

If you have a Learning Ally subscription, I would recommend you just pick
out a College Algebra textbook.  It sounds like odd advice, but it's what I
did for calculus.  The book was inaccessible, the professor worked with me,
but still, the book was inaccessible, and a math textbook is a math
textbook, so I just picked a random book and learned quite a lot from it.

For this semester, I'd say that, unless you really work your butt off to
pass the rest of the exams, you're probably not going to be very well.  I'm
sorry you've had such a terrible experience, but hopefully some of this
makes sense.

A quick note: Bookshare is absolutely useless in math, from my experience.

On 10/16/14, Clayton Jacobs via Blindmath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> I am a college student currently taking College Algebra With Limits 
> and Statistics. In both classes, I am not doing well. In College 
> Algebra With Limits, the professor speeds through his lectures, and 
> even though I type out the equations he puts on the board, I can't 
> keep up with him. To make matters worse, my Orion Ti-84 Plus 
> calculator decided to give on me after only having it for 4 months. 
> The note packets are inaccessible, and while the disability department 
> at my college is translating the packets, it is almost too late in the 
> semester. Additionally, the professor does not explain the steps he 
> uses to solve the problems, so my tutor has to do all of the work in 
> teaching me. While I have aced my homework, I have failed both of my 
> exams so far. The first exam was inaccessible, and the reader couldn't 
> even read the exam properly to me to even make sense of it. The second 
> exam, which I took yesterday, covered material not even on the review 
> sheet. Here was one of the problems verbatim, which I tried my best to 
> solve. Factor the expression into a product of linear factors given 
> that 1-i is a zero. f(x)=x^4-7x^3+18x^2-26x+12 In Statistics, the 
> professor was great in trying to get me accessible notes, but fell 
> short when formulas were concerned. I still do not know how to compute 
> the standard error, margin of error, confidence intervals, and finding 
> probabilities between z scores or areas. I am at a loss of what to do 
> at this point. Trying to explain accessibility with formulas has been 
> a nightmare, especially with my College Algebra With Limits professor, 
> who has adamantly refused to translate the equations into accessible 
> form because that requires too much work for him, according to his 
> statement. I had to file a federal complaint against this college last 
> year for failing to accommodate, in which a mediation agreement was 
> reached. Yet, in many ways, it seems the faculty have treated this as 
> a drop in the bucket. I have had such a bad experience with collegiate
accommodations that I have questioned why I even went back to college in the
first place.
>  		 	   		
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