Tom & YOs- I couldn't get the video without jamming up my browser (I don't have time to tweak the security settings right now to get it) but I found this: http://worrydream.com/#!/LearnableProgramming ... which is an interesting start. Along similar lines... Recently I read an article on the BBC site, about a 14-year-old Ph.D. student named Jacob Barnett, who's presently working on PT-symmetric lattice systems and, according to a number of working scientists (including at Princeton), is smarter than Einstein and on track for a Nobel in physics. This kid has a lot of his stuff recorded on YouTube, and the following is specifically relevant here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq-FOOQ1TpE Go to the spot at 1 minute 15 seconds, and watch through to 1 minute 30 seconds: he shows a brief animation of how he visualizes numbers. He uses the number 32 as an example, and the visual shows a set of colored lines in a visual hierarchy of sizes, that intersect and rotate in various ways. This strikes me as being a teachable skill, once you understand the system (which I don't). And it may be usable by the rest of us (people who aren't nearly as smart as Einstein or Barnett). Any math geeks here, I'd be interested in what you think about this. I've also been thinking about a program that would read equations out loud, in much the same manner as an audio reader for regular text such as e-books. It would also have a light-colored block cursor (non-blinking) that would move through each equation as it's being read, so you can see which symbols are being read from moment to moment. Ask yourself, how can a person who has some kind of visual disability, interact with equations in a program such as Mathematica? I'm dyslexic and that has resulted in serious holes in my math skills, as in, embarrassingly serious holes, caused by the way dyslexia flips non-semantic character strings, specifically the various parentheses, brackets, and suchlike, and other mathematical symbols such as the ones represented by Greek letters. One of the work-arounds I use in certain areas is to "spatialize" or create three-dimensional visualizations of abstract processes and time-dependent processes (trading time for space, as it were), such as traffic and signal flow in telephone switching systems. Another work-around is to turn visual into audio, as a running soundtrack in my mind's ear. For the way I process information, an equation reader that turns the visual into audio while moving a cursor across the material being read, would be an incredibly useful tool. I'm inclined to think it would have a pretty wide range of application, for people who have other visual or learning disabilities or variations. Does anything like this exist yet? -G. ===== On 13-05-21-Tue 1:33 PM, Tom Fitzpatrick wrote: