Comment by delinka | Hacker News Reader

Comment by delinka | Hacker News Reader

"Doing mathematics" and "using math in my code" are so far apart. In my programs that Really Utilize Math, I'm taking advantage of some existing mathematical concept, but I'm not advancing the state of the art in mathematics.

However, the few times I've really wanted to delve into math and really understand the concepts underpinning that formula I'm using, I need a machine to iterate on. My computer isn't ideal because the software that's available is too expensive for 'hobby' use; there's no library that lets me use code in a language I know to manipulate symbols and equations. The TI series of calculators are not ideal because A) they're intentionally crippled (to prevent student cheating) and B) they have a bit of learning curve to them when you don't use them regularly.

Can I get a touch-device app for mathematical symbol/equation manipulation? That'd be ideal.

http://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html that will yield a TeX symbol which can trivially be transformed into something acceptable into most of the engines (e.g. Sage, Octave, etc) for evaluation. It's not "evaluate definite integral (0,5] for .." but it'll get you half the way there.

PS. Cheating on TI's is trivial. If you're a math professor, adopt a no graphing calculator rule. (You can still cheat on your standard secretary's 20$ calculator, especially in the age of low-power Cortex M0+'s, but it's somewhat less trivial. I'd imagine memorizing 5 or 6 rules on taking the derivative would be easier for someone capable of doing that. (Though if those tools had been around when I was in uni, I might have just done it for the sake of doing it.))

You might be interested in Sage. It's free and open source and allows you to use Python syntax.

http://www.sagemath.org/

https://cloud.sagemath.com/

There's always the Wolfram Alpha app. Or if you want something offline, you could use SymPy (though obviously this isn't a touch-device app). I use Wolfram Alpha on my iPhone pretty much every day for simple matrix calculations, derivatives, integrals, and summations and it works very well.

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