Some Basic Features

David Doria had some great feedback after last Friday's presentation. Here's a list he put together of things both he and us would like to see ASAP

1) Addition Balancing

Initial state:

A = B+ C

Final state:
A - C = B

2) Multiplicative Balancing

Initial state:
A = B C

Final state:
A/C = B

3) Expand (distributive property (additive and multiplicative))
Initial state:
((x-2)*(x-4))

Final state:
x^2-6*x+8

4) Factoring (inverse of 3)

After last Saturday's meeting, we're sort of close to achieving this right now. More posts coming after today's session

A Smart EQN Interface

Joe LaBarbera and Alex Rad here, we'd like to welcome you to the decade of multitouch.

Working for the Rensselaer Center for Open Source, we'll be designing and building an interactive equation interface. The idea is to augment human mathematical abilities with software that both expands educational capacity and greatly improves analysis capability.

For education, calculators can be a mixed blessing. On the negative side, some students tend to become overly dependent on the analytical capabilities of the more capable hardware. This can utterly destroys their mathematical abilities. We're hoping to make something where this just isn't an issue.

The design behind a really smart equation editor is a also a bit different than your normal form-based formula editor. W're trying to augment, not replace, human analytical capability. Rather than writing on a piece of paper, a user can manipulate symbols on a screen. And with the advent of multi-touch capable devices, these manipulations will match and possibly surpass the intuition of a pen.

For more information check out this poorly put together presentation Alex Rad made last Friday here.

Thanks,

Joe & Alex