LANS Informal Seminar
"Explorations in the Characterization of Mathematical Handwriting"
DATE: May 7, 2007
TIME: - Description:
SPEAKER: Bruce Char, Drexel University
LOCATION: Building 221, A-261, Argonne National Laboratory
We explore a characterization of a handwritten symbol, that of approximating a normalized x/y coordinate sequence from a handwriting sample as a linear combination of basis functions fit to the normalized coordinate sequence. We can describe the model for a symbol as in this way, and match new input against model vectors that are close to the vector of the input.
We explored this idea using the Ontario Research Centre for Computer Algebra (ORCCA) database of handwriting samples. It suggests that similar handwritten characters do have
vectors that are close together. We discuss the preliminary results and what they suggest for future work, and demonstrate some of the tools (some using Maple) we used or built to conduct the exploration.
This is joint work with Stephen Watt, with contributions by Elena Smirnova of the ORCCA group of the University of Western Ontario.
Please send questions or suggestions to Debojyoti Ghosh: ghosh at mcs dot anl dot gov.