These excerpts are from a response to a reader on the wonderful tumblr by Jerome Herr, Experiments In Processing. Learning to code is like learning a natural language: it’s quite hard and slow at first but if you hold on just a little then suddenly you start seeing all the beauty of it and you’re […]
A student talked about Kaprekar’s constant (6174) during their my favorite presentation. Really cool. Steps (from wikipedia): Take any four-digit number, using at least two different digits. (Leading zeros are allowed.) Arrange the digits in descending and then in ascending order to get two four-digit numbers, adding leading zeros if necessary. Subtract the smaller number […]
I had so much fun with the original Mandelbrot program that I decided to see if I could improve it. I was amazed by how easily I was able to generate a fractal picture that looked exactly like other pictures online. I didn’t look at anyone else’s code, just went down the path and the amazing […]
I was inspired by a My Favorite presentation from a student on the Mandelbrot fractal. I played around for a half hour at school without a ton of success, but I sorted out the sticking points on the way home, and finished it up tonight. Amazingly simple (the code may not look simple, but it’s […]
I prepared a small demonstration of the Chaos game for some math teachers. First we used transparencies, markers, dice, and rulers, but humans are mistake-prone and slow. To The Computer! I decided to experiment with the rules of the game to see where it’d go. Human Error What happens when you bring in a random amount […]
It’s midterm week at school, and James Tanton threw out two interesting questions in two days. I spent a little time programming “solutions” to these problems (not solutions, just verifications for an infinitesimally small portion of the natural numbers). Problem One: Start with a prime, square it, and add 4. Repeat. (eg 3->13->173->…) Must eventually […]
