Introduction A few months back there was a bit of a kerfuffle about how Twitter uses an algorithm to crop images. If you gave Twitter two faces in one image then it would use the algorithm to select a face … Continue reading
(Note: this post is an extension on the calculating pi with python post from a couple of years back. Also here’s another way to inefficiently calculate pi with Buffon’s Needles.) We’re currently working with Power series and Taylor series in … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
Linked from the Visualizing Math blog, a cool simulation of bouncing balls with randomized gravity and bouncing coefficients. Forward Slash Reality Check out the video too.
@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 … Continue reading
Intro 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 … Continue reading
Number theory nugget: 357686312646216567629137 is a prime number which remains prime after removing any number of digits from the left side! — Maths World UK (@MathsWorldUK) March 4, 2013 Otherwise known as left-truncating primes with every suffix prime and no … Continue reading
From @joshgiesbrecht , fantastic web app from Google. Blockly is a web-based programming environment that allows you to export the code as Python, Javascript, Dart (anyone outside of google use this??), or XML (wow ugly code). Blockly was just released a … Continue reading
To introduce the fibonacci sequence using the recursive series to my Pre-Calc H class (although most of them know it), I came up with something on the fly that worked nicely. To set up the fibonacci sequence, I showed them … Continue reading