[nabs-l] Making college Biology and math accessible?

Miranda knownoflove at gmail.com
Tue Dec 21 21:33:41 UTC 2010


Hi Katie,
I'll actually be taking this class next Fall at the earliest. I'm not going in to amath-related field. However, this class is part of my general Ed requirements. *Cringe* It's either this or a higher-level statistics class. I did well in Algebra in high school, but NEVER touched trig or pre-calc! Ahhhhh! Time to do some crash course work in trig, geometry, pre-calc and a refresher in Algebra!
I'm working to install LateX so I can become familiar with it. My husband does computer and web programming, so he is familiar with programming lingo.
I used Excel in my Applied Math class back in high school, and I plan to take Hadley's Excel course as a refresher in that.
Thanks, and have a great day!

In Christ, Miranda

-----Original Message-----
From: Katie Wang <bunnykatie6 at gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 3:17 PM
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Making college Biology and math accessible?

Hi, Miranda,
  As others have said, LaTex is probably the best way of showing your
work in math, so it is definitely worth learning if you are planning
to pursue a math-related field of study. For the course you will be
taking in the spring, I think that showing your work in MS Word may be
the best bet. You will need to work out a system to express all the
notations in text, as the Equation Editor is not accessible. Some of
my professors in college found this system of notation cumbersome and
hard to read, so I hired a scribe to write out my work as I dictated
(from my braille copy) for those classes. If you are used to doing
calculations in Nemeth braille, you can work out problems on your Pac
Mate, and Excel can come in handy as a very powerful calculator. Hope
this helps!
    Katie

On 12/21/10, Miranda <knownoflove at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Ignasi,
> Thanks so much! We are reading through the LateX installer PDF file.
> I'll be curious to experiment with this, and to also explore numerical ways
> of solving problems usually solved graphicly.
> Thanks again, and have a great day!
>
> In Christ, Miranda
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ignasi Cambra <ignasicambra at gmail.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 2:23 AM
> To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
> Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Making college Biology and math accessible?
>
> LateX is similar to a programming language. It basically allows you to type
> any scientific text using plain text, and there are several tools which will
> allow you to compile the code and build a PDF file (or something else) which
> a sighted person can look at. Equations and other things will look
> graphically perfect, pretty much as if it was a textbook.
> I would say most of the time you just have to understand what you're doing,
> instead of just doing whatever the professor tells you to do in order to
> solve problems. Especially in lower level math classes in college they tend
> to simplify things a lot... Whenever you see this, you do this and you'll
> get the right answer. I had taken lots of calculus in high school so when I
> got to college classes I already had my way of doing things. But you can
> always ask the professor to help you find numerical ways of doing many
> things. An example which comes to my mind is some simple integrals which can
> be calculated by figuring out an area under the curve. Sometimes that's very
> simple, but if one knows how to integrate an equation directly, then there's
> no need of graphs. In any case, I am not saying that graphs are completely
> useless and sometimes you will have no choice and you will have to use them.
> And sometimes, they will be very useful for blind people also. Sighted
> people use graphs for many purposes and we still need to be proficient at
> understanding them, because sometimes it's the only way either because
> problems are designed to be resolved graphically or for several other
> reasons. I only described my way of working, although I am sure many blind
> people out there enjoy working with graphs much more than I do. Basically I
> have no problem with them, but if I can do things without, I do.
>
> Ignasi
> On Dec 20, 2010, at 4:46 PM, Miranda wrote:
>
>> Hi IC,
>> How can I determine the numerical formulas for the problems in which the
>> professor gives the graphical solutions?
>> I  actually won't start college until next Fall, so I'll look into the
>> software you mentioned.
>> I was never too good at reading graphs in high school, so it could be
>> interesting to try and figure them out in my mind. I've been Blind since
>> birth, so have no rememberance of visual representations.
>> Thanks, and have a great week!
>>
>> In Christ, Miranda
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Ignasi Cambra <ignasicambra at gmail.com>
>> Sent: Monday, December 20, 2010 3:28 PM
>> To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
>> <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
>> Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Making college Biology and math accessible?
>>
>> For the math class, try to make sure to find a way to show your work in
>> print to the professor. I would suggest using LateX but if you haven't
>> used it in the past it might be a little hard to learn it on time for your
>> class if it's starting this spring semester. Although now that I think
>> about it, many classes end up making you choose an answer on multiple
>> choice exams, so as long as you can do stuff in your mind you should be
>> OK. Also, when it comes to geometry, trigonometry, calculus and anything
>> that requires graphical representations, you will have to see how much of
>> it you can just imagine in your head. I have completed five calculus
>> classes in college without using a single graph other than the ones I had
>> to use to answer particular exam questions, because I have a good idea in
>> my mind of how these things are supposed to look. Also, college professors
>> too often will give you graphical methods to solve problems, because
>> that's what works best for most students. But many times the same things
>> can be done numerically, which is much faster for me because I can do it
>> in my mind or by typing my calculations on the computer if they are too
>> complex. I am not a math major and only took the whole calculus sequence
>> for fun, so I don't know what else you can find in math college classes.
>> In any case, I never tried to get exactly what other students get in terms
>> of materials. If there are a bunch of graphs that I know I won't use, why
>> bother?
>> Just my opinion...
>>
>> IC
>> On Dec 20, 2010, at 12:14 PM, Miranda wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>> I have no useable vision, and I'll be taking a Biology course in college.
>>> I'll also be taking a math course that covers Algebra, geometry,
>>> trigonometry and Pre-calculus.
>>> Any ideas on how my professors and I can make these courses accessible?
>>> Thanks in advance, and have a great week!
>>>
>>> In Christ, Miranda
>>>
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