Show HN: A whiteboard that writes math equations

126 pointsposted 10 months ago
by Ilasky

51 Comments

jpl56

10 months ago

Nice tool! I like the human like handwriting, but I'd prefer a more adult one.

Writing the denominator first looks weird to me, same as writing the square root symbol after what's under it.

flareback

10 months ago

Looks like my 5 year old's handwriting. Sometimes I actually have no idea what it was writing. Plus the text was overlapping at times

bee_rider

10 months ago

It looks like the handwriting of a 5 year old or a software engineer

lupire

10 months ago

Writing the radical sign last is a sign of sophistication of maturity.

Ilasky

10 months ago

Agreed the ordering is a bit weird. Working on figuring out a way to adjust that. Thanks for the feedback!

xenonite

10 months ago

Also I would expect that the letters are consistent. Not necessarily legible, but always quite the same.

sieste

10 months ago

agreed. I'm not sure what the constraints are regarding the font and its animation, but generally it's possible to look "human", and be elegant and legible at the same time.

lionkor

10 months ago

The handwriting really goes out of the window with a query like

> what is the derivative of e^-x?

It does a good job, but man is it hard to read

GTP

10 months ago

It just makes everything more realistic :D

minkles

10 months ago

it's still better than my handwriting :)

hardlianotion

10 months ago

Very cool. Could do with training on some decent handwriting

singlow

10 months ago

Yes - it's fun that its a bit messy, but it also seems to write the same letter in very different ways in the same session. It should at least use consistent patterns for writing each letter even if their are minor variations to make it look more real.

pimlottc

10 months ago

Agree, at times it is so sloppy that it’s not clear what’s being written.

withinrafael

10 months ago

I asked it to "provide a summary of Beetlejuice using purely numbers and addition" (nonsense) and it provided an answer that led to infinity. Now I'm wondering if I missed an interpretation in my many viewings of the film.

philshem

10 months ago

I asked “what is the circumference of a square?” and it started tripping and then I asked again and it gave me something less trippy “P=4s”. In between it answer correctly for the circumference of a circle.

samschooler

10 months ago

Here is the raw answer from the endpoint

./solve "what is the circumference of a square?"

Solution: I'm sorry, but there seems to be a misunderstanding in the question. Squares don't have a circumference; they have a perimeter. Circumference is a term used for circular shapes. Let me explain the difference:

1. For a square, we use the term 'perimeter' to describe the distance around its outer edge.

2. The perimeter of a square is calculated by adding up the lengths of all four sides.

\text{Perimeter of a square} = 4s

3. Where 's' is the length of one side of the square.

4. Circumference, on the other hand, is used for circular shapes like circles or ellipses.

5. The circumference of a circle is calculated using the formula:

\text{Circumference of a circle} = 2\pi r

Where 'r' is the radius of the circle.

I hope this clarifies the difference between perimeter (for squares) and circumference (for circles)!

samschooler

10 months ago

./solve "How tall is a giraffe in ants"

Solution: I'm sorry, but this isn't a typical math problem. The height of a giraffe can't be accurately measured in ants, as ant sizes vary greatly between species. Instead, I can provide you with some interesting facts:

1. An average adult giraffe is about 16-18 feet (4.8-5.5 meters) tall.

2. The average size of an ant ranges from 0.08 to 1 inch (2-25 mm).

3. If we were to use the largest ant size for a very rough estimate, a giraffe could be about 192-216 ant lengths tall. However, this is not a standard or accurate measurement.

loxias

10 months ago

This is really fun. Multiple questions seem to yield a blank page, does this mean it's hugged to death, or are my questions too difficult? :)

I'm enjoying probing the bounds of understanding by giving progressively harder problems. It found the roots of a cubic, and proved sqrt(2) and pi were irrational.

Too difficult to read the handwriting, and I'm curious about "how it works". All in all, a fantastic demo.

langcss

10 months ago

I asked it to prove Fermats Last Theorem and it started writing (some nonsense) into the margin. Which was funnny.

Cool project tho

Ilasky

10 months ago

Unlike Fermat, the whiteboard has enough room in the margin :)

Ilasky

10 months ago

I was inspired by https://calligrapher.ai to see if I can make something that looks similar to it, but for math.

I ended up hooking up an LLM on the backend to solve math problems as well.

This ended up being more of an exploration in trying to make alternative outputs for LLMs that are a little more dynamic than just text and/or LaTeX.

gus_massa

10 months ago

It looks almost like my handwriting :).

It's interesting that each time it shows a different variant.

Anyway, when I press "get the derivative of f(x)=x^2" I get

              2-1
  f'(x) = 2 x
but the 1 is too big. (Do you need a screenshot?)

Ilasky

10 months ago

Using a variety of hand-written inputs, so font variation would be present. If you could give a screenshot, that’d be helpful!

gus_massa

10 months ago

I run it again and got this: https://imgur.com/a/3t1Xvtg

I added labels to show the problem (but they are too small) and I used Paint to create a fake version where the 1 has the size I'd like.

tempfile

10 months ago

Why does it write like it's having a stroke?

zamadatix

10 months ago

For anyone trying this on desktop if you make the window tiny the boldness, spacing, and overall readability becomes waaay better than when you have a large window.

p0w3n3d

10 months ago

It solved `(x^2-1)/(x-1)` to `x+1` but it is not equal. It should be specified that `x` must not be equal 1 in this case.

InDubioProRubio

10 months ago

HNug of Death atm, but cool idea. Could benefit from a tutorial mode, where you click on a symbol, it explains its function via whiteboard tutorial from youtube - in the whiteboard..

Ilasky

10 months ago

Should be back up!

dzink

10 months ago

It looks like it was trained on someone's years of teaching math to kids and a collection of all of the handwriting they've done. Looks like, but not sure if it is.

filipeisho

10 months ago

What are you using to make handwritten text? Is it a model?

godelski

10 months ago

I asked for the number of ways to get a royal flush given an ace and King in your hand. It told me 4

Solopreneur427

10 months ago

Its really cool how (talking about learning) we go from hand to technology, to again hand

haskman

10 months ago

Tried "what is (x-2-1)/(x-1)?" and got absolute gibberish in return

Ilasky

10 months ago

Do you have a screenshot of what you got? Or can you describe it?

I just tried it and it gave the correct answer.

haskman

10 months ago

Now that I'm looking more carefully at the answer, it is probably correct but just formatted badly with overlapping text - https://imgur.com/a/F7awsTY

Ilasky

10 months ago

Ah — I see! Thanks for taking a screenshot.

Will work on making the spacing better on desktop!

ThefinalResult

10 months ago

I wrote: Write the gamma function and explain it's relationship to erfi

I got: Nothing

kleiba

10 months ago

A bit too sloppy and a bit too slow for my taste, but otherwise great!

Ilasky

10 months ago

Actively working on making the font more legible and adding a “speed slider”!

madamelic

10 months ago

You should label the top end of the slider "TA"

jv22222

10 months ago

IMHO the writing animation should run about 4x that speed.

donq1xote1

10 months ago

This sounds very interesting! I will check it out.

lanstin

10 months ago

Wow, it can do ODEs. Pretty awesome.

mdrzn

10 months ago

Very cool project!