Open thread, Oct. 12 - Oct. 18, 2015

MrMind

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

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2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

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Why isn't there a good way of doing symbolic math on a computer?

I want to brush up on my probability theory. I hate using a pen and paper, I lose them, they get damaged, and my handwriting is slow and messy.

In my mind I can envisage a simple symbolic math editor with keyboard shortcuts for common symbols, that would allow you to edit nice, neat latex style equations, as easily as I can edit text. Markdown would be acceptable as long as I can see the equation in it's pretty form next to it. This doesn't seem to exist. Python based symbolic math systems, like 'sagemath', are hopelessly clunky. Mathematica, although I can't afford it, doesn't seem to be what I want either. I want to be able to write math fast, to aid my thinking while proving theorems and doing problems from a textbook, not have the computer do the thinking for me. Latex equation editors I've seen are all similarly unwieldy - waiting 10 seconds for it to build the pdf document is totally disruptive to my thought process.

Why isn't this a solved problem? Is it just that nobody does this kind of thing on a computer? Do I have to overcome my hatred of dead tree media and buy a pencil sharpener?

What would be really nice is tablet software that can translate handwritten math into latex, and compile that into pdf.

By the way, what I think you want is not "doing symbolic math on a computer," but "having a good input method for equations."

edit: Also can someone please write a good modern programming language for typesetting? With all due respect to Dr. Knuth, tex is awful.

8gjm11y

I tend to use TeXmacs for this. It's a WYSIWYG document editor; you can enter mathematics using (La)TeX syntax, but there are also menus and keyboard shortcuts. It's free in both senses. No symbolic-manipulation capabilities of its own, but it has some ability to connect to other things that do; I haven't tried those out. Mathematica isn't that far from what you want, I think, and it has the advantage of being able to do a lot of the symbolic manipulation for you. But, as you say, it's really expensive -- though if you haven't checked out the home and (if applicable) student editions, you should do so; they're much cheaper. Anyway, the fact that to me it sounds close to what you want makes me suspect that I'm missing or misunderstanding some of your requirements; if you could clarify how it doesn't meet your needs it may help with suggesting other options.

2Richard_Kennaway11y

Would any of these be useful? That's just a list I found by Googling /MathJax editor/. I'm not familiar with any of them. MathJax is a Javascript library for rendering mathematics on web pages. The mathematics is written in MathML. I use pen and paper, and switch to LaTeX when I have something I need to preserve. It's not very satisfactory, but since anything I might want to publish will have to go through LaTeX at some point, there's no point in using any other format, unless it had a LaTeX exporter. And pen and paper is far more instant than any method I can imagine of poking mathematics in through a keyboard.