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I don't know anything about the workflow of scientists or mathematicians. But I was wondering if equation recognition was something that could help them? Like,

I don't know anything about the workflow of scientists or mathematicians. But I was wondering if equation recognition was something that could help them? Like, is there utility in seeing an equation on a whiteboard, importing it, and hooking up the right inputs and outputs from that equation? This is very much idle daydreaming. When you write out a big equation on the wall, what happens then? Does it need to be validated? Or does it go directly into a paper and no computation is performed upon/with it?

bluish29 3y ago
For me at least, it is useful for different things, but they are mainly about writing stuff. It is much easier to copy a couple of equations from your references and use something like image to latex to get the source without having to write them yourself. Especially for complicated equations. It makes it much faster to have discussions with other people online. It makes writing notes, copying equations from textbook .etc. was always stupidly time-consuming if you end up writing them in latex. Also, for a lot of people with addiction to think on blackboard where you don't have to worry about anything else. It is easy. Take a photo of what you did, erase the board, write new things and take another photo. And when you are done and want to preserve this in some notes or copy to paper, just use an equation recognition tool and your life is much easier. It is a productivity tool that saves and efforts, it will not be going to make you a super researcher/scientist.
abdullahkhalids 3y ago
Big equations don't come out of the ether. Either they are derived some simpler set of underlying equations based on assumptions, or they are taken from a paper/book that did that derivation. Usually, whoever does the derivation, or someone who wants to understand things properly, will do computations on multiple steps of the derivation from the start to the finish. A lot of these computations can be done by hand - you don't need a computer. A lot of computations should be done by hand - even if they could be done by a computer - because you only get a feel for the equations if you play with them with your hands. To quote Dirac, 'I consider that I understand an equation when I can predict the properties of its solutions, without actually solving it.' That comes from solving a lot of them by hand. Yes, oftentimes, doing numerical or symbolic computation with a computer helps. But is the pain point of that having to type the equation into the computer. Hardly. It would be nice, but nothing ground breaking.

bluish29 3y ago

For me at least, it is useful for different things, but they are mainly about writing stuff. It is much easier to copy a couple of equations from your references and use something like image to latex to get the source without having to write them yourself. Especially for complicated equations. It makes it much faster to have discussions with other people online. It makes writing notes, copying equations from textbook .etc. was always stupidly time-consuming if you end up writing them in latex. Also, for a lot of people with addiction to think on blackboard where you don't have to worry about anything else. It is easy. Take a photo of what you did, erase the board, write new things and take another photo. And when you are done and want to preserve this in some notes or copy to paper, just use an equation recognition tool and your life is much easier. It is a productivity tool that saves and efforts, it will not be going to make you a super researcher/scientist.

abdullahkhalids 3y ago

Big equations don't come out of the ether. Either they are derived some simpler set of underlying equations based on assumptions, or they are taken from a paper/book that did that derivation. Usually, whoever does the derivation, or someone who wants to understand things properly, will do computations on multiple steps of the derivation from the start to the finish. A lot of these computations can be done by hand - you don't need a computer. A lot of computations should be done by hand - even if they could be done by a computer - because you only get a feel for the equations if you play with them with your hands. To quote Dirac, 'I consider that I understand an equation when I can predict the properties of its solutions, without actually solving it.' That comes from solving a lot of them by hand. Yes, oftentimes, doing numerical or symbolic computation with a computer helps. But is the pain point of that having to type the equation into the computer. Hardly. It would be nice, but nothing ground breaking.