Towards a web-based progressive handwriting recognition environment for mathematical problem solving

  • Authors:

  • Ba-Quy Vuong;Yulan He;Siu Cheung Hui

  • Affiliations:

  • The Computer Sciences Department, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706-1685, USA;Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK;School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798, Singapore

  • Venue:
  • Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

The emergence of pen-based mobile devices such as PDAs and tablet PCs provides a new way to input mathematical expressions to computer by using handwriting which is much more natural and efficient for entering mathematics. This paper proposes a web-based handwriting mathematics system, called WebMath, for supporting mathematical problem solving. The proposed WebMath system is based on client-server architecture. It comprises four major components: a standard web server, handwriting mathematical expression editor, computation engine and web browser with Ajax-based communicator. The handwriting mathematical expression editor adopts a progressive recognition approach for dynamic recognition of handwritten mathematical expressions. The computation engine supports mathematical functions such as algebraic simplification and factorization, and integration and differentiation. The web browser provides a user-friendly interface for accessing the system using advanced Ajax-based communication. In this paper, we describe the different components of the WebMath system and its performance analysis.