Re: Statistics packages

2009-08-28 Thread Chris Hofstader

I would guess that you could get them from the author (try googling on  
SPSS JAWS, etc.) and you'll probably find them.  If not write an email  
to Eric Damery (er...@freedomscientific.com) and he will point you in  
the right direction.

cdh
On Aug 27, 2009, at 2:02 PM, Simon Fogarty wrote:

>
> Any idea where we can get these scripts for spss?
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: macvisionaries@googlegroups.com
> [mailto:macvisionar...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Chris Hofstader
> Sent: Friday, 28 August 2009 1:34 a.m.
> To: macvisionaries@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: Statistics packages
>
>
> Hi,
>
> The "industry standard" for statics packages is SSPS and I do not know
> if there is a Macintosh version.  Peter Orem (probably misspelled) in
> the UK wrote a set of JAWS scripts and tends to keep them up to date
> so he and other blinks can use the program.
>
> Math in general is a very touchy subject around people with vision
> impairment.  LaTeX is an excellent notation system but was designed to
> generate nicely formatted print output.  Knuth (now a professor at
> Stanford who hates being bothered), authored of TeX and LaTex and, in
> one of his fairly rare public statements expressed near shock that
> people were using the tools to actually manipulate equations.
>
> I would recommend the Nimith (also likely misspelled) or DotsPlus
> (John Gardner of ViewPlus) Braille systems for math.  Both were
> designed from the ground up to be used by blind people (Nimith and
> Gardner are both blind)  and both take up less very expensive real
> estate on a refreshable display.  You can contact Gardner personally
> at ViewPlus, I think Abe Nimith is long retired and probably hard to
> find.
>
> The basic differences in the systems is that Gardner uses an 8 dot
> output and Nimith, being much older, uses only the original 6 dots.
> While Gardner can fit more information in a single, thus furthering
> the efficiency of those expensive cells, it is far less widely known
> so, if you encounter other blinks, they will be more likely to know
> Nimith than any of the eight or nine other systems, including Gardner,
> out there for math.  If you live in Australia, though, you will find a
> whole lot of DotsPlus users doing math with Braille - I've no clue why
> people down under embraced that system over the others except that, to
> many people, it is thought to be superior and because fewer cells so a
> smaller Braille display  will work decently.
>
> Once again, I don't know if SSPS has a version for Macintosh nor do I
> know if the Macintosh Braille output can jump in and out of different
> translation tables (does anyone here switch from English to another
> human language and back using Braille?).  There are other math
> packages: Mathematica, MathCAD for instance,   that may have Macintosh
> versions  but I know not if they support jumping in and out of the
> tactile systems like Nimith and DotsPlus.
>
> Ted Henter is actively working on his HenterMath program again but it
> will definitely not be done in time for your coursework this fall.
>
> I think that both Freedom Scientific and Humanware have low cost
> Nimith tutorials for PAC Mate and BrailleNote respectively.  I've
> never used either  so I can't not give a first hand endorsement but
> the one from FS grew out of the very popular Nimith tutorial sold (or
> was it given away)  by Blazie back in the old days.
>
> I know of lots of people working on various aspects of handling math
> without vision.  You might look up Art Carshmer, a professor at UC San
> Francisco, for whom math for blinks has been nearly his entire
> research career.  There are others out there and, if you are
> interested, write to me off list and I can help you with introductions
> and such as the information above is nearly 100% of what I can recall
> about this subject on my first cup of coffee.
>
> Happy Hacking,
> cdh
>
>
>
> >


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RE: Statistics packages

2009-08-27 Thread Simon Fogarty

Any idea where we can get these scripts for spss?


-Original Message-
From: macvisionaries@googlegroups.com
[mailto:macvisionar...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Chris Hofstader
Sent: Friday, 28 August 2009 1:34 a.m.
To: macvisionaries@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Statistics packages


Hi,

The "industry standard" for statics packages is SSPS and I do not know  
if there is a Macintosh version.  Peter Orem (probably misspelled) in  
the UK wrote a set of JAWS scripts and tends to keep them up to date  
so he and other blinks can use the program.

Math in general is a very touchy subject around people with vision  
impairment.  LaTeX is an excellent notation system but was designed to  
generate nicely formatted print output.  Knuth (now a professor at  
Stanford who hates being bothered), authored of TeX and LaTex and, in  
one of his fairly rare public statements expressed near shock that  
people were using the tools to actually manipulate equations.

I would recommend the Nimith (also likely misspelled) or DotsPlus  
(John Gardner of ViewPlus) Braille systems for math.  Both were  
designed from the ground up to be used by blind people (Nimith and  
Gardner are both blind)  and both take up less very expensive real  
estate on a refreshable display.  You can contact Gardner personally  
at ViewPlus, I think Abe Nimith is long retired and probably hard to  
find.

The basic differences in the systems is that Gardner uses an 8 dot  
output and Nimith, being much older, uses only the original 6 dots.   
While Gardner can fit more information in a single, thus furthering  
the efficiency of those expensive cells, it is far less widely known  
so, if you encounter other blinks, they will be more likely to know  
Nimith than any of the eight or nine other systems, including Gardner,  
out there for math.  If you live in Australia, though, you will find a  
whole lot of DotsPlus users doing math with Braille - I've no clue why  
people down under embraced that system over the others except that, to  
many people, it is thought to be superior and because fewer cells so a  
smaller Braille display  will work decently.

Once again, I don't know if SSPS has a version for Macintosh nor do I  
know if the Macintosh Braille output can jump in and out of different  
translation tables (does anyone here switch from English to another  
human language and back using Braille?).  There are other math  
packages: Mathematica, MathCAD for instance,   that may have Macintosh  
versions  but I know not if they support jumping in and out of the  
tactile systems like Nimith and DotsPlus.

Ted Henter is actively working on his HenterMath program again but it  
will definitely not be done in time for your coursework this fall.

I think that both Freedom Scientific and Humanware have low cost  
Nimith tutorials for PAC Mate and BrailleNote respectively.  I've  
never used either  so I can't not give a first hand endorsement but  
the one from FS grew out of the very popular Nimith tutorial sold (or  
was it given away)  by Blazie back in the old days.

I know of lots of people working on various aspects of handling math  
without vision.  You might look up Art Carshmer, a professor at UC San  
Francisco, for whom math for blinks has been nearly his entire  
research career.  There are others out there and, if you are  
interested, write to me off list and I can help you with introductions  
and such as the information above is nearly 100% of what I can recall   
about this subject on my first cup of coffee.

Happy Hacking,
cdh



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Re: Statistics packages

2009-08-27 Thread Chris Hofstader

Hi,

The "industry standard" for statics packages is SSPS and I do not know  
if there is a Macintosh version.  Peter Orem (probably misspelled) in  
the UK wrote a set of JAWS scripts and tends to keep them up to date  
so he and other blinks can use the program.

Math in general is a very touchy subject around people with vision  
impairment.  LaTeX is an excellent notation system but was designed to  
generate nicely formatted print output.  Knuth (now a professor at  
Stanford who hates being bothered), authored of TeX and LaTex and, in  
one of his fairly rare public statements expressed near shock that  
people were using the tools to actually manipulate equations.

I would recommend the Nimith (also likely misspelled) or DotsPlus  
(John Gardner of ViewPlus) Braille systems for math.  Both were  
designed from the ground up to be used by blind people (Nimith and  
Gardner are both blind)  and both take up less very expensive real  
estate on a refreshable display.  You can contact Gardner personally  
at ViewPlus, I think Abe Nimith is long retired and probably hard to  
find.

The basic differences in the systems is that Gardner uses an 8 dot  
output and Nimith, being much older, uses only the original 6 dots.   
While Gardner can fit more information in a single, thus furthering  
the efficiency of those expensive cells, it is far less widely known  
so, if you encounter other blinks, they will be more likely to know  
Nimith than any of the eight or nine other systems, including Gardner,  
out there for math.  If you live in Australia, though, you will find a  
whole lot of DotsPlus users doing math with Braille - I've no clue why  
people down under embraced that system over the others except that, to  
many people, it is thought to be superior and because fewer cells so a  
smaller Braille display  will work decently.

Once again, I don't know if SSPS has a version for Macintosh nor do I  
know if the Macintosh Braille output can jump in and out of different  
translation tables (does anyone here switch from English to another  
human language and back using Braille?).  There are other math  
packages: Mathematica, MathCAD for instance,   that may have Macintosh  
versions  but I know not if they support jumping in and out of the  
tactile systems like Nimith and DotsPlus.

Ted Henter is actively working on his HenterMath program again but it  
will definitely not be done in time for your coursework this fall.

I think that both Freedom Scientific and Humanware have low cost  
Nimith tutorials for PAC Mate and BrailleNote respectively.  I've  
never used either  so I can't not give a first hand endorsement but  
the one from FS grew out of the very popular Nimith tutorial sold (or  
was it given away)  by Blazie back in the old days.

I know of lots of people working on various aspects of handling math  
without vision.  You might look up Art Carshmer, a professor at UC San  
Francisco, for whom math for blinks has been nearly his entire  
research career.  There are others out there and, if you are  
interested, write to me off list and I can help you with introductions  
and such as the information above is nearly 100% of what I can recall   
about this subject on my first cup of coffee.

Happy Hacking,
cdh

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Re: Statistics packages

2009-08-26 Thread Barry Hadder

Lindsay,

I strongly recommend a tool called octave.  It is a Matlab like  
environment but it is text based rather than graphical so you will run  
it through terminal.  It got me through probability and differential  
equations I and II.  I really don't know what I would have done  
without it. You can either get it through macports, or there is a  
precompiled version for the mac at: http://octave.sourceforge.net/.   
The latter happens to be an app package that you would run from within  
finder as you would any other app.You will also want to poke  
around the documentation on the octave main sight at 
http://gnu.org/software/octave 
.   However, I wouldn't recommend downloading octave from there  
because you will have to build it from scratch by hand and that's not  
something you will want to do.

A good place to get started with latex is: 
http://www.andy-roberts.net/misc/latex/index.html 
.  A really good distribution for the mac is mactex.  I don't remember  
the url, but if you google it it comes right up.  You can also get  
other tex distributions through macports.

If any of this is confusing, feel free to write me off list.  I  
probably didn't make some things as clear as I should have.


On Aug 26, 2009, at 9:35 PM, Lindsay Yazzolino wrote:

>
> Hi Everyone,
>
> I am going to be taking a college statistics course this fall and am
> wondering if there currently exist any accessible statistics packages
> for the Mac or if I am best off sticking with WIndows/any other
> operating system. Also, what other methods have any of you used for
> successfully completing statistics courses? I am looking forward to
> the class, and want to make the best use possible of the tools which I
> have at my disposal, especially my MacBook. On a related note, I feel
> that I would greatly benefit from learning LaTeX for my math and other
> courses, andwould love to receive some pointers about where to get
> started.  Thanks in advance for any input, and feel free toat any
> point take this discussion off list if you feel that it benefits
> statistics students but not necessarily Mac users.
>
> Lindsay
>
> >


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