[BlindMath] I'm blind! I love math! I want to go higher than high school geometry.
Ray McAllister
raymcal at att.net
Sat Sep 16 00:22:35 UTC 2023
Well, I've thought about testing for Asperfers, but, my state won't fund that since I'm over 21, and then, so, I have a label then, which also comes with a stigma, so it's like, what's the point? :) I'm learning to just invoke the "accept" clause in the Serenity Prayer more often and encourage friends and family to do the same.
I do have synesthesia. I see everything, sounds, tastes, days of the week, letters, whichever alphabet, etc. Things I have done to help people relate to math is I code fractals. I can't use the standard fractal generators, but I've learned how to make trees, shrubs, snowflakes, mountains, and more, with fractals. Thing is: Since I don't actually know Calculus, I haven't a clue why a set of numbers will produce a fern or a tree. I only know what types of numbers to punch in to make something. I am somewhat past geometry in certain limited areas, but only in those areas. I have matured since high school and just picked up stuff here and there. I'd have to pay for a class at a college in order to have their assistive tech people help me with anything. I'm wanting to come up with things that a blind person could just access without thousands of dollars for special equipment that is more than what one would usually have.
Ray.
-----Original Message-----
From: Sabra Ewing [mailto:sabra1023 at gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, September 15, 2023 7:42 PM
To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
Cc: Neil Soiffer; Ray McAllister
Subject: Re: [BlindMath] I'm blind! I love math! I want to go higher than high school geometry.
Maybe you are autistic, which I'm not thinking about based on stereotypes.
If you are bored, you could explore making math more accessible to cited and blind people with what they call spatial processing deficits.
I am listening to shapes all the time. I have done higher level math but I don't like it that much. The point is that the shapes I listen to are real. They can be replicated through music visualization software.
I'm not sure if there's a way to get the waves and lines from that software, as that is what most shapes are unless intentionally created with wearing earphones, and then putting them into audio graphing software so I can make sure the shape of the sound is the same as what is visually showing.
People keep telling me I have synesthesia and the shapes aren't real. They are real because other people can hear them, including someone on this list who sent me a song with a lightning bolt in it but I will not identify them. But this person didn't know how to answer me when I repeatedly asked where the shapes came from.
I'm not talking about echolocation, which I also have although I wish I could click and listen to three-dimensional shapes in more detail.
I know that's off-topic, but you said squares, which got me thinking about shapes even though you weren't talking about shapes.
I have also worked out that the textures are the closest to the texture you would get with echolocation. But I don't know how to tell music recommendation places like Spotify to pick songs based on their shape and texture and to stop recommending things by the same artist.
This is really important because a whole Nother sense comes on when I listen to binaural recordings. That's why I say I have spacial processing differences versus deficits. It's not some sort of euphemism. My spacial processing sense does exist apparently but since I could never use it I don't know if it's reduced or what.
Tactile graphs and maps are basically just nonsensical blobs and lines to me But I can listen to audio drawings including houses and moving arrows and remember what they look like. There was an app on the iPhone that did it but now it's gone.
Sabra Ewing
> On Sep 15, 2023, at 3:52 PM, Ray McAllister via BlindMath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>
> The Braille display won’t handle 2d diagrams, is the issue. Now, there is this in-between option: Have an embossed supplement which would have all the 2d diagrams, but nothing else. And it would all be labeled. So, you read the main e-book on a Braille display, and then it would say, See Figure 2-8, and then you’d open the embossed book, Figure 2-8 and study it. But the supplement would only be the diagrams.
>
>
>
> Ray.
>
>
>
>
>
> From: Neil Soiffer [mailto:soiffer at alum.mit.edu]
> Sent: Friday, September 15, 2023 5:21 PM
> To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
> Cc: Ray McAllister
> Subject: Re: [BlindMath] I'm blind! I love math! I want to go higher than high school geometry.
>
>
>
> While I'm sure having the embossed book would be great, as I'm sure you know, the book would be huge. It would likely be a bit expensive to emboss. Your school might pay for it though.
>
>
>
> If you have a refreshable braille display, you can read the book, including the math in Nemeth on the braille display. You'll get the best quality Nemeth if you use NVDA with the MathCAT addon. If you are a JAWS user, the current beta of JAWS includes an option to use MathCAT, so you'll get more accurate Nemeth if you turn that option on. Even if you don't, the Nemeth will probably be understandable even if it doesn't meet the spec in some cases.
>
>
>
> Math is fun and with the work of the PreTeXt project, there is a lot more that is accessible than there used to be. Good luck,
>
>
>
> Neil Soiffer
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 15, 2023 at 5:08 AM Ray McAllister via BlindMath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>
> I don't find your email address anyhwhre,, but I am very good with Nemeth.
> I don't have an embosser of any type, so someone would have to emboss the
> things and Free-Matter-for-the-Blind them to me. My email address is
> raymcal at att.net for private emails.
>
> Thanks,
> Ray.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: BlindMath [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of David W.
> Farmer via BlindMath
> Sent: Friday, September 15, 2023 7:28 AM
> To: Ray McAllister via BlindMath
> Cc: David W. Farmer
> Subject: Re: [BlindMath] I'm blind! I love math! I want to go higher than
> high school geometry.
>
>
> Dear Ray,
>
> The PreTeXt protect, specifically David Austin and Rob Beezer,
> is currently working on an accessible version of the book
> Active Prelude to Calculus. This includes Nemeth braille and
> accessible diagrams, with the diagrams having both a tactile
> representation and a description with words.
>
> The level of the mathematics seems appropriate for you, and I am
> sure they would be happy to have you as a proofreader. You did
> not mention whether you can read Nemeth. I am not sure what type
> of embosser these diagrams require.
>
> If you email me off-group, the four of us can talk about how
> to proceed.
>
> Regards,
>
> David
>
>
>> On Fri, 15 Sep 2023, Ray McAllister via BlindMath wrote:
>>
>> Hi, I'm totally blind, and have loved math and been good at math since my
>> father started teaching me when I was 3 and 4 years old. I could do
>> long-hand division problems in my head at age 6. I won math competitions
> in
>> high school. One day, bored, in church, in high school, I figured out, in
>> my head, how to find the 5 5th roots of a number, using intuition,
>> completing the square, and the quadratic formula to break x^5 = y^5 down.
>> Last year, when I had Covid, I wanted to make sure nothing was happening
> to
>> my brain, so I started playing with magic square patterns, with inner
> magic
>> squares, a border square, basically. I got up to 10x10 on my own, and
> then
>> wrote a computer program to take it up to 1000x1000 which means that I
> have
>> this Excel spread sheet here with a list of numbers from 1 to 1 million
> that
>> is a magic square, all rows, columns, and diagonals adding up to the same
>> number, with about 40,000 smaller magic squares inside it.
>> My path has been rather weird. While I'm as good at math as many
>> people are socially, soecially, I'm as dyslexic as most people seem to be
>> with math. Since higher math wasn't as accessible, as my small high
> school
>> didn't offer trig and precalculus, and things weren't as accessible, I
> ended
>> up following another passion, ministry, and ultimately got a pH.D. in Old
>> Testament, helping code advanced Hebrew symbols into Braille, which I was
>> part of the team that won the 2016 Bolotin award from the NFB. Well, my
>> Ph.D. is getting me nowhere now, and my mind, at 48, is beginning to turn
>> toward math again, if anything, for a hobby. I was able to go onto Khan
>> Academy and go through Trig, and while I can't see the diagrams, I was
> able
>> to figure out a number of proofs in my head. I've had to get my student
>> loans forgiven, so I'm not allowed to take out any more federal loans, and
> I
>> wouldn't anyway for any more training. I'm still wondering what kind of
>> path there could be for me in math, for fun, career, whatever. I can't
>> afford any of those fancy graphical embossers. I'd love to go at least
>> through Calculus, somehow. I just work so naturally with numbers I feel
>> so held back by the world that just never seems to move fast enough for
> me,
>> if anyone out there understands.
>>
>> I have, though, been thinking of a way higher math, at least, at times,
>> could be described in text for someone who is blind and doesn't have all
> the
>> fancy equipment. Sy lrsdy, for trig, has anyone played around the
> Cartesian
>> coordinate plane? If you don't know how that works by the time you reach
>> trig, you're in a lot more trouble than missing triangle images.
> Basically,
>> you could say, We have a triangle, point A is on the origin. Point B is
> at
>> (4, 0) and point C is at (1, 7). Segment a is the line hooking points B
> and
>> C. Segment b hooks points A and C. Segment c hooks points A and B. You
>> can do all kinds of things with this, including run a line segment d down
>> from point C, straight vertically to the X axis to split this into 2 right
>> triangles. You can, then, write out proofs for things, and the blind
> reader
>> need only remember this diagram. I wrote out a proof for the Law of Sines
>> using this system, and a couple more points and line segments I had to
> come
>> u pwith on Line c. I haven't found any place with Braille books on this
>> stuff I can access. Of course, if someone's special ed office hired a
>> transcriber to transcribe a math book, has anyone thought of finishing the
>> job and getting it in the National Library Service once the blind student
> is
>> done with the material?
>>
>> I welcome discussion on this.
>>
>> Write soon,
>> Ray McAllister.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
>> www.avast.com
>>
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