Layman's Book

Inspiration

I am a first year Master of Science in Data Science student with a background in health sciences. I have extensive research and medical experience, but I am unfamiliar with mathematical jargon. I wanted to create something that would not only help me understand, it would help me learn the material in a way that is tailored to me. This is meant to help me learn along with math majors instead of having to spend hours over the weekend searching for clarification.

What it does

Layman's Book takes any academic material and translates it into a language the user is more familiar with. I am used to medical jargon, so I might select my background as medical. If I upload a statistical paper, it will take that paper and translate it into language that is more familiar to the user. This app will not only translate the material, it incorporates the original language style into quizzes and flashcards. As you learn, you also begin to learn how to read these papers and become more familiar with new jargon. Additionally, this app will translate for those who do not have much of an educational background. If scientific writing was more accessible to the layman, there would be less misinformation.

How we built it

I built this using Base44.

Challenges we ran into

I really wanted to add a study scheduler that would allow you to generate suggested study schedules if you are studying for a class, but this ended up crashing my entire program so I took it out. There were some bugs Base44 fixed here and there, but nothing extreme.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

It is genuinely helping me understand the most recent chapters of the textbook for applied statistics and regression. I also added a classic lit translator which will turn poems written by classical authors like Emily Dickinson/Walt Whitman/Virginia Woolf etc. into modernized text. The language of the era is a massive deterrent for a lot of people. I want more people to recognize how much we have lost on contemporary poetry. That one's personal, I couldn't resist. I also added a data visualizer that accepts csv files and will detect what may be done with the data. It will give you interactive graphs.

What we learned

It is surprisingly easy to build these apps and I am very impressed. It was a lot of fun creating this and I will certainly be using it again.

What's next for Layman's Book

I want to add a schedule builder and refine the features so that they are more true to what I had really wanted to add to the app.

****Due to platform limitations, the Base44 editor environment is not publicly shareable via link. However, all functionality can be fully explored through the live application link below. Also, the only edit I have made to this since submitting is a URL change.

Built With

• base44