Fractal Brownian Tree
June 6, 2013, 12:00 am
@fawnpnguyen whoa. Need to try and make this.
— Dan Anderson (@dandersod) June 4, 2013
I started off and used VPython to create the fractal, but it was slow and buggy. Here’s a movie of my first attempt. When you click you create a new “seed” for the fractal to start.
So I rewrote...
Painting Puzzler – Car Talk
June 2, 2013, 12:00 amI never could remember how to solve these type of questions.
RAY: Tommy, Dougie and I are sitting around the office one day at Car Talk Plaza. We were noticing how dingy the place looked. We’d been there 15 years, and the place had never been painted. So, we decided to paint Car Talk Plaza.
W...
Big Ice Cubes
May 29, 2013, 12:00 amAre big ice cubes worth it? Do they dilute your drink slower?
Dr. Drang looks at the math behind it. This needs some more investigation. Also: sphere icecubes.
Microsoft Lies? Diagonal Screen Size vs Area
May 24, 2013, 12:00 amMicrosoft has put up an ad comparing various Windows tablets to the iPad.
So bigger is better right? On their original ad they claimed that the ASUS VivoTab Smart tablet had more area than the iPad.
But Elliot Temple claims the following:
How can the screen with a larger diagonal m...
Follow-up to 50 billion app downloads
May 21, 2013, 12:00 amSo 50 billion apps downloaded on the iTunes store has come and gone, and I have nothing to show for it (except for a bunch of fun learning and some excitement for the next time).
Things that happened:
Bill Waterson
May 20, 2013, 12:00 amThe truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive.
Must read advice from Bill Waterson on Brain Pickings, Maria Popova’s blog.
Your preparation for the real world is not in the answers you’ve learned, but in the questions you’ve learned how to ask yourself.
50 billion app downloads
May 2, 2013, 12:00 amOk. When is it going to hit 50 billion? Put your bets down.
Old posts from when Apple was at 25 billion app downloads.
More questions:
When will it hit 100 billion? 1 trillion? How many apps will be sold by December 25th? Any more?
Edit 5/11/13
More info:
Random Group Maker
April 18, 2013, 12:00 amNeat link: Team Maker
Allows you to paste in a roster and make random groups. No friction, no mess. Cool stuff.
Calculate Pi with Python
March 14, 2013, 12:00 amIntro to Computer programming worked at calculating digits of pi today. The actual algorithms aren’t too bad, but getting more than the standard number of digits from a double is a bit trickier. Here’s a program that calculates pi using:
Bailey–Borwein–Plouffe formula
Bellard’s formula
an...
Powers of 2 without a Zero
March 6, 2013, 12:00 am2^86 is largest known pwr of 2 that does not contain 0.What about other digits?Does each non-zero digit occur inf often among the pwrs of 2?
— James Tanton (@jamestanton) March 6, 2013
Interesting. The Intro to Programming Students gave a crack at this one; and after 30 minutes all were cl...