Now or later

Mathematical handwriting recognition is an important method of mathematics input for computers. While strides in recognition have been made in recent years, recognition is still at a level where mistakes are common and often inexplicable from the user's point-of-view. As a result, recognition mistakes can cause user distraction and frustration. We examine how user preference for real-time or batch recognition mode is affected by recognition accuracy and the number of expressions entered. Our results show that users prefer real-time recognition when working with multiple expressions; however, with high accuracy recognition, users did not prefer one recognition mode over the other.