No Stupid Questions

I can’t even read this

I mean no offense at all, but your handwriting is not good. It's somewhat legible but that's the highest opinion I have of it. That said, maybe the dot paper is interfering with the scan?

Maybe if your handwriting wasn't so terrible, a machine could read it.

I can read about 80% of the words in this if I’m honest, and had to fill in the rest with a best guess.

I just asked chatGPT to transcribe it and it said

The handwritten text in the image says:

"Dimer stabilization free energies were also determined from thermodynamic integration (TI, see methods), which provide a direct validation of the MM-GBSA results."

J. Phys. Chem. B 2018, 122, 7038-7048

There was a post on HN recently about using LLMs for OCR. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42952605

I think the dotted paper might be confusing the OCR. I'm curious if you 'shop out the dots, will the OCR have a better time?

This is challenging to read as a human. And I know I'm not the only one. So if we can't work out all the letters... no way a computer could either. I liken it to the idea that if I type out "detialed", spell check can suggest "detailed", but if I write "ditaled" it's not going to know.

They aren't just general purpose tools like tesseract are, they can be additionally trained to recognize handwritten text to become much-much better at their task. For example my kobo reader has builtin offline ocr and it works incredible, almost too good.

Also I can't recognize half of the text as well. 😄

I'm just astounded that you write your d's as ol... first time I've ever seen someone write the two parts completely separate.

Try again on plain paper, or on lined/ruled paper. That dotted graph paper hurts my eyes and I'm pretty sure I'm mostly human...

I’ve read that the USPS has amazing OCR for mail sorting. It is, of course, highly tuned for one particular data format.

As many others are saying, I can't read that handwriting. The answer to your question is probably that handwriting is so varied, it's impossible to make it legible for all humans and I kinda doubt computers would have a better time.

"Dime stabilization fcee enejrs wuu also aletumiud fcom thumoolynamih intepcalion (T1, see metlods), whiln p'oviole ဓ dinect valiolation of the MM-GBSA resucts."

נ. Phys. Chem. B 20^8, ^22, 70❥38-7048

This is the closest.
Remember, human brains also have OCRs.

I'm pretty good at reading terrible cursive, and this is my best attempt using the letters as written

Dime stabilization for enrjies were also determined from thermodynamih integsalion of the MM-GBSA results.

I think the first one in italics should be energies, but wouldn't assume OCR would know the context to fill in the missing letters. Not sure what word that starts with thermo ends in an h or maybe a k. No idea on the one that starts with inte. I might have been able to determine those words if I was familar with the context, but OCR doesn't work that way.

You seriously need to work on your handwriting. I'm impressed OCR can make out anything at all from that.

This isn't a OCR problem. This is a you problem. I'm human and I can only make out a few words.

Edit. Assuming it's yours. Or is this from the scientific article? Regardless. Whoever wrote that needs to go back to third grade and redo their writing exercises.

You took the time to spell your post correctly and use correct grammar.

I used to have very sloppy handwriting. I've come to realize that if you want other people to understand you, you do need to make an effort to be understandable.

Shortcuts in communication do not show superiority. Too many shortcuts devalue your communication, just like poor spelling and grammar would devalue your post.

"Quick example" might be the key here. I was making some notes on something earlier today and my brain was putting out letters faster than my hand could keep up and I got letterforms not entirely unlike yours. Far too used to typing where each letter takes almost exactly the same amount of time to "write".

I had to remind myself to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n. Letter by letter. Make them neat. If you have attention span issues like me, it's painful, but when the letters take shape it almost soothes that beast. But not quite in my case and so back to rushing again.

But it's plain as day on the page where I slowed down. The letters look almost machine-printed by comparison. Next to an actual machine print, they're still pretty bad, but you know. Better than the middle of that wide gap between perfect machine and rushed squiggles.

The other thing with typing in the computer age is that there's this wonderful invention called the backspace key. When you're hurriedly writing with pen or pencil, backspace isn't a thing, so a writer is more likely to think "eh, close enough" and plough on. There are definitely a few full words crossed out and rewritten in my notes where it really bothered me though.

Dude I can barely read my own handwriting

Here's what I got with Google Lens. Certainly some mistakes, but not "jumbled mess of nonsense."

Dimes stabilization fire einiges were also delirmed. from thermodinamik integration (I), see methods), which provide a dimict, validation of the MM. GBSA results

J. Phys. Chem. B 2018, 122 7038-2048