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AcrossFiveJulys United States3612 Posts February 13 2009 09:02 GMT #1 I am working on a research project to recognize sketched math equations through a web interface and would greatly appreciate people's help in generating data for me. All you will have to do is spend a few minutes drawing certain symbols repeatedly using your mouse and it will help me to build/diversify my data set, which will be used later to (hopefully) accurately recognize entire mathematical equations and do cool stuff with them. Please PM me if interested in helping! Thanks!

micronesia United States24751 Posts February 13 2009 17:07 GMT #2 So basically you are doing text recognition specifically for math? Will it be able to read words also? If so, will you build on a previously existing program for this? Also can you explain the research aspect of this? And what do we need to set up on our computer in order to do this?

AcrossFiveJulys United States3612 Posts February 13 2009 21:38 GMT #3 It's not exactly text recognition, it's sketch recognition of symbols in context. Eventually, the goal is to recognize any sketched math equation through the web interface I have built and output LaTeX code. The research aspect of it is designing a sketch system which operates properly with the added difficulty of network delays, and also applying machine learning techniques to recognizing contextual, free-form sketches rather than symbols in isolation or heavily restricted sets of equations such as was done in MathPad if you've seen that. So back to what I need from you guys, I need to start with a low level recognizer that can recognize math symbols like infinite, sigma sum, delta, integral, etc, and I wasn't able to find a publicly available database, so I'm going to start from scratch in that aspect. As for what you need to set up on your computer-- nothing. It's through a website and you'll be drawing with your mouse. It's hard to draw accurately with a mouse but I want to see if I can do accurate recognition through mouse input. TL is a great place to get the data since people here are going to be much more accurate with the mouse than the average people.

micronesia United States24751 Posts February 13 2009 21:51 GMT #4 Sure I'll do some... would you prefer people who have used the symbols a lot, or people who are not used to drawing them, or both? I think for most of them I'll go in the former category. Although now that I think about it my math looks kinda like chicken scratch from getting sloppy over several years... maybe I should write more carefully while I do this? haha Also much more used to pencil than the mouse I guess...

AcrossFiveJulys United States3612 Posts February 13 2009 22:01 GMT #5 I don't have a preference for now between different levels of competency in drawing the symbols; I want to have a diverse data set so it will work well for most everybody. If some of the symbols are drawn too messily, I can manually remove some of the data, but I just ask that you try to draw the symbol to a reasonable level, at least to the point where another human would be able to tell what you're drawing. Still looking for more volunteers!

AcrossFiveJulys United States3612 Posts March 04 2009 21:31 GMT #6 Hey guys, Thanks so much to all who helped. So far I have 4,300 drawing samples spread across ten symbols. That is a start, but I need lots more. Please PM me if you are willing to help! It will only take 10 minutes or so of your time and you'll be strengthening an artificial neural network... oh yea baby.

Cpt Obvious Germany3073 Posts March 04 2009 22:03 GMT #7 Count me in. Tell me what I gotta do and I'll do it. I should be familiar with most of the symbols you are looking for.

Cpt Obvious Germany3073 Posts March 05 2009 13:10 GMT #8 Ok done. Twas fun, too. kinda hard to do a sigma with a mouse You don't need the rest of the greek alphabet? gamma, zeta, theta, tau, pi, phi, rho, omega, those are all pretty common in equations... Also, there are like, a million other mathematical symbols I can think of. You don't need those? O.o

AcrossFiveJulys United States3612 Posts March 06 2009 00:56 GMT #9 Hehe, of course I will need those other symbols if I end up extending this to the full math equation recognizer, but for now I need to make sure my method is going to work for a set of 10 symbols before I go through the trouble of collecting that much more data. Thanks for helping

7c.nEptuNe United States153 Posts March 06 2009 00:57 GMT #10 I'll do it, I know I was supposed to PM, but i like to jump on the bandwagon.

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