Math Search for the Masses: Multimodal Search Interfaces and Appearance-Based Retrieval
This work addresses the need for math search tools for mathematical non-experts, focusing on visual formula browsing rather than semantic understanding.
The paper tackles the problem of making math search accessible to non-experts by summarizing multimodal search interfaces and appearance-based retrieval systems, with publicly available source code for the min math search interface and Tangent search engine.
We summarize math search engines and search interfaces produced by the Document and Pattern Recognition Lab in recent years, and in particular the min math search interface and the Tangent search engine. Source code for both systems are publicly available. "The Masses" refers to our emphasis on creating systems for mathematical non-experts, who may be looking to define unfamiliar notation, or browse documents based on the visual appearance of formulae rather than their mathematical semantics.