math + Persian: some fun!

[Connie Bobroff]

A challenge for you....

The poem, "Ma`shuq-e man" by Forugh Farrokhzaad, IMHO, can be expressed in sigma/summation notation somehow.

As the `aasheq's perception of her own image increases towards infinity, her impression of the ma`shuq keeps decreasing. He starts out larger than life but by the end, she, formerly the weak one is now the one protecting him. This is a very dynamic poem, one variable is going up as the other is going down. I think this motion can be expressed as some sort of equation but I forgot all my math after high school so please help me out!

Who can set this up for me? I will use it to make an illustration for the poem here:

http://sartre2.byu.edu/persian/poetry/MashuqeMan1.html

I don't know if this sort of sigma notation can be typed in Unicode or a jpeg will be required after typing in a wordprocessor. We have already heard from Alireza that OpenOffice can't seem to handle math and Persian. It would be nice to type the Persian words عاشق and معشوق in this somewhere.

-Connie

[Connie Bobroff]

Well, I'm still struggling with this poem. One thing I discovered is
that there is some variation in sigma, i.e., it can be written out in
Arabic or "backwards" (mirrored):
http://www.w3.org/TR/arabic-math/#SymbolsChoice
I thought numbers and math, including formulas and expressions should
all run from ltr in Perso-Arabic so I was surprised to find this.
-Connie

[Ehsan Akhgari]

I haven't personally seen any such notations in Persian math classes or textbooks.  Numbers are definitely written from left to right in Persian (e.g., the leftmost digit is the coefficient of the largest power of 10 in the number), and mathematical expressions are also written from left to right, just like in English.  In fact, I haven't seen algebraic variables and such written using the Arabic/Persian alphabet.

Maybe the only exception to this rule that I've seen are textbooks which replace the "lim" notation for limits with "حد", but they use it as a drop-in replacement, and nothing else changes in the formula notation.

--
Ehsan
<http://ehsanakhgari.org/>

--
http://groups.google.com/group/persian-computing

[Connie Bobroff]

Drop-in replacements (but not mirror symbols!) seem fine and speaking of which, this is also interesting:

http://www.w3.org/TR/arabic-math/#Persian

(scroll down a bit for the Persian drop-in replacement)

I hope there is a WYSIWYG html editor to type that!

BTW, I also just discovered in MS Word (2007) the Insert > Equation feature which I had never noticed before. It makes typing math equations easy and has no problem with included Persian script. Good for casual users like me but perhaps mathematicians may have a different opinion.

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 02/06/2010 07:15 PM, Connie Bobroff wrote:
> Drop-in replacements (but not mirror symbols!) seem fine and speaking of
> which, this is also interesting:
> http://www.w3.org/TR/arabic-math/#Persian
> (scroll down a bit for the Persian drop-in replacement)

Of course the image comes from the FarsiTeX paper by Roozbeh and myself. ;)

behdad

[Connie Bobroff]

On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 3:56 PM, Behdad Esfahbod <behdad....@gmail.com> wrote:

 

Of course the image comes from the FarsiTeX paper by Roozbeh and myself. ;)

Oh! I should have guessed. I was perplexed as to how it could be that someone was actually working on Persian Math.