Math ability and music ability are related. Similar to Owen's question, I would love to know how to search for a song on the internet given that I only know how to hum a few bars.
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Martin C. Martin Sent: Tuesday, December 26, 2006 4:14 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Mathematical Search and Regular Expressions I think Barbie summed it up best: "Math is hard." Even most people who are good with computers find math hard. There are many programmers who have trouble thinking in recursive/dynamic programming terms, or who have trouble with the sort of simple 3D vector math found in games. As such, searching for exponentials, or putting them on the web, just doesn't come up that often. If it did, it would be a bigger part of HTML/wiki/whatever. At least, that's how it looks to me. Best, Martin Owen Densmore wrote: > Some of us have been discussing the relationship between mathematics > and computation. One particular element of this is how math is a > second class citizen within the web and computing world. > > Its tough for me to send you an equation, for example, one with a > standard representation and easily input into your particular math > software (MatLab, Maple, Mathematica). The specialization of math > software bears this out .. all the packages are quite expensive and > not particularly interoperable. MathML has not matured and is not > yet ubiquitous, nor can it be used as input to these math packages. > TeX can typeset math, but has no semantics tied to it. > > One particular example came to me yesterday while thinking about > searching for certain kinds of exponentials: How would I search for > an equation on the web, and how could I "grep" through a set of > papers using a regular expression containing mathematics? > > The semantics of mathematical notation has to be considered in regex > as well: a*b is the same as b*a, and the regex engine would have to > know that. > > I'm wondering if this is just that math has not yet had its day in > the web sunlight, or it is deeper .. a fundamental problem. > > -- Owen > > Owen Densmore http://backspaces.net > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
