How can we speak math

It is likely that most people can communicate mathematics to a computer more effectively (rapidly and accurately) by speaking than they can by using a stylus on a computer tablet. This may seem surprising, but is our speculation based on trying various alternative input methods. An even better setup may be to speak and simultaneously use pointing or handwriting. Unfortunately, building a properly functioning prototype using this concept is difficult. Yet a successful implementation of such a “multimodal ” combination should allow the computer to reinforce correct recognition while identifying and perhaps repairing “unimodal ” errors. In some cases speaking may be more convenient than typing, even for rapid typists: many mathematical symbols are missing from the keyboard but can be easily spoken and recognized. Even without venturing into Greek, or alternative fonts, just handwriting or even typing a number, say “fifty million ” may be slower and more error-prone than speaking. Pursuing the goal of effectively speaking and recognizing small pieces of mathematics, led to a study of how hard it would be to speak arbitrarily long sections of mathematics, including nested complex expressions. We first describe programs for the inverse problem: computer generation of mathematical speech