[nfbcs] Seeking suggestions for helping blind students with math

[Walker, Michael E]

Yes. I didn't realize that when you only hit reply and not reply all, it sends the response off list. Here was my reply:

From:	Walker, Michael E
Sent:	Monday, January 16, 2017 11:13 AM
To:	'Jude DaShiell'
Subject:	RE: [nfbcs] Seeking suggestions for helping blind students with math

Information systems was my major. If I was going for an engineering or scientific discipline, I would have needed to do more research on math for blind people. I think the important point here, when helping a blind student with college math, is to find out what degree program they are in, and taylor what decisions to make based on that. Writing programs to understand math concepts is obviously not suitable for everyone. I do think everyone should be able to use Excel at a basic level though.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jude DaShiell [mailto:jdashiel at panix.com] 
Sent: Monday, January 16, 2017 11:09 AM
To: Walker, Michael E via nfbcs
Cc: Walker, Michael E
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Seeking suggestions for helping blind students with math

That would work for the business end; that would very probably not work for the scientific or engineering end.

Since I had already learned to program in basic before I studied statistics I wrote many small programs that actually did the statistics calculations on entered data and my instructor told me I would understand statistics better that way doing that kind of programming since I could explain it to the computer.

On Mon, 16 Jan 2017, Walker, Michael E via nfbcs wrote:

> Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2017 10:22:15
> From: "Walker, Michael E via nfbcs" <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
> To: "nfbcs at nfbnet.org" <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: "Walker, Michael E" <michael.e.walker3 at boeing.com>
> Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Seeking suggestions for helping blind students 
> with math
> 
> Hi, what worked for me when taking math classes was using my PAC Mate Omni with a Braille display. Since I only had to take lower level math classes like college algebra, basic calculus (also often called business calculus), basic probability and statistics, and business statistics, I didn't worry about fancy math packages like LaTeX for learning the concepts. I know that LaTeX is a markup language of its own, that one must spend time learning. For college algebra and calculus, what often got me by for doing things with fractions was denoting by parentheses. For example, I might write something like (x+3)/(x+5). Those opening and closing parentheses would make the operator precedence more clear in terms of what should be in the numerator and denominator. For statistics, we sometimes just used word form, instead of the special mathematical symbols (i.e. x bar). Since the statistics classes were for business majors, we often used Excel to perform our calculations.
>
> I know there will be folks who disagree with me on this list in terms of the fact that you need to know the actual math symbols, but also remember that I wasn't aiming to become a blind mathematician. My goal was to work in IT, such as with installing servers and writing business application software, so what I mentioned above still got me by just fine. I got A's and B's in all my math courses.
>
> Mike
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-- 




-----Original Message-----
From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Sabra Ewing via nfbcs
Sent: Monday, January 16, 2017 11:19 AM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List
Cc: Sabra Ewing
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Seeking suggestions for helping blind students with math

Yes, but that is a very complicated way to go about things, especially when programs already exist.

Sabra Ewing

> On Jan 16, 2017, at 11:09 AM, Jude DaShiell via nfbcs <nfbcs at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> That would work for the business end; that would very probably not work for the scientific or engineering end.
> 
> Since I had already learned to program in basic before I studied statistics I wrote many small programs that actually did the statistics calculations on entered data and my instructor told me I would understand statistics better that way doing that kind of programming since I could explain it to the computer.
> 
>> On Mon, 16 Jan 2017, Walker, Michael E via nfbcs wrote:
>> 
>> Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2017 10:22:15
>> From: "Walker, Michael E via nfbcs" <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
>> To: "nfbcs at nfbnet.org" <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
>> Cc: "Walker, Michael E" <michael.e.walker3 at boeing.com>
>> Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Seeking suggestions for helping blind students 
>> with math Hi, what worked for me when taking math classes was using my PAC Mate Omni with a Braille display. Since I only had to take lower level math classes like college algebra, basic calculus (also often called business calculus), basic probability and statistics, and business statistics, I didn't worry about fancy math packages like LaTeX for learning the concepts. I know that LaTeX is a markup language of its own, that one must spend time learning. For college algebra and calculus, what often got me by for doing things with fractions was denoting by parentheses. For example, I might write something like (x+3)/(x+5). Those opening and closing parentheses would make the operator precedence more clear in terms of what should be in the numerator and denominator. For statistics, we sometimes just used word form, instead of the special mathematical symbols (i.e. x bar). Since the statistics classes were for business majors, we often used Excel to perform our calculations.
>> 
>> I know there will be folks who disagree with me on this list in terms of the fact that you need to know the actual math symbols, but also remember that I wasn't aiming to become a blind mathematician. My goal was to work in IT, such as with installing servers and writing business application software, so what I mentioned above still got me by just fine. I got A's and B's in all my math courses.
>> 
>> Mike
>> _______________________________________________
>> nfbcs mailing list
>> nfbcs at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfbcs_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for nfbcs:
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nfbcs_nfbnet.org/jdashiel%40panix.c
>> om
>> 
> 
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> 
> 
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