[nfbcs] Seeking suggestions for helping blind students with math

[Jude DaShiell]

I would think even for an Information Science Major latex would get real 
useful in at least two kinds of exercises.  First production of 
flowcharts and second production of data flow diagrams.  It could 
probably do other things really well too.

On Mon, 16 Jan 2017, Andy Borka via nfbcs wrote:

> Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2017 12:56:04
> From: Andy Borka via nfbcs <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
> To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Andy Borka <sonfire11 at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Seeking suggestions for helping blind students with math
> 
> It is a test method of learning something. If you can teach it to someone that doesn?t know the subject, then you have learned it well.
>
>> On Jan 16, 2017, at 12:18 PM, Sabra Ewing via nfbcs <nfbcs at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>> 
>> 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
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>>> 
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