Re: How do you read Mathematica?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg118888] Re: How do you read Mathematica?
- From: Richard Fateman <fateman at cs.berkeley.edu>
- Date: Sat, 14 May 2011 03:08:33 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <iqagor$ffu$1@smc.vnet.net> <iqg60s$d3i$1@smc.vnet.net> <iqj17a$rhu$1@smc.vnet.net>
On 5/13/2011 3:30 AM, Helen Read wrote: > On 5/12/2011 4:33 AM, Wolfgang Windsteiger wrote: >> >> I can imagine that in an educational context it could be quite nice to >> have spoken mathematics. > > So far the only use I have made of Speak in the classroom was to show my > students how to use RunScheduledTask and Speak to scare their roommates :-) > > The students really got a kick out of it. > > -- > Helen Read > University of Vermont > It is quite a different task to have spoken mathematics and spoken Mathematica. The first task is well-explored, and to the extent that it can be solved, there are some fairly good efforts, usually aimed at visually impaired students. T.V. Raman's Aster program was one of the first, but see this http://www.snv.jussieu.fr/inova/villette2002/act5b.htm As for reading Mathematica out loud, there is a simple solution that, however, exposes the cryptic nature of Mathematica's syntax. Simply read out loud the FullForm. That gives "words" for notation like /. Thus x/. x->y is ReplaceAll[x,Rule[x,y]]. So all you need is a verbalization of [, ], and ",". Exploring the issue of how one could speak Mathematics INTO a computer, is an interesting task. www.cs.berkeley.edu/~fateman/papers/speakmath.pdf