[FRIAM] Mathematical Search and Regular Expressions

[Martin C. Martin]

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
> 
> 
> 
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