futuristic math update
kirby urner
Just catching up on recent posts, also bouncing over
to math-teach @ Drexel which I frequent, and Sean's
Wittgenstein list, with its philosophy of mathematics
and so on.
The math curriculum I'm teaching is being written by
the chairman of our little virtual nation, a dictatorship.
It's done over the wire with terminal services, with all
the software running on the back end, although it's
possible to somewhat duplicate the setup locally
(not supported, hard to do).
The group theory aspect, which I've been writing
about on edu-sig (internal list, open archive), is
not front and center, in that the goal of this course
is to develop mastery of a machine executable
grammar, a logic, crafted by our dictator and
supplemented with Italian styling (Martelli & Co.).
It's not as fast as a Ferrari, but sometimes speed
is not what you're most interested in, when it
comes to attracting passengers.
With only about six files of native code (a math
language), we're able to generate a Mandelbrot Set,
follow Wolfram's 256 rules, and play Conway's
Game of Life. This is all done by "farming" a
rank-2 (dim 2) array of ASCII characters ("ascii
waves of grain") so as not to overburden the
back end servers, which are already running
Ellipse, a student version of Eclipse (free and
open source, like the Apache stuff).
My students are not on the same systems science
track as the PhD candidates at Portland State,
who have been assisting in the background,
with work in Blender, Sketchup and Ruby (a
sister language out of Japan with several
common ancestors if you study your heritage --
more on math-thinking-l).
Nate and John Driscoll have both delved into a
Game of Life on Sketchup which they're using to
build primitive cityscapes ala the Blender
cuicidator (city generator). Here's an over the
shoulder shot from the Voodoo House (not
my fault they practice acupuncture in the living
room).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/5732014094/in/photostream
(adjacent shots for more context)
I'll post a link to a screen shot of the Mandelbrot
pretty soon (I'm away from my studio at the
moment). Instead of a "turtle" (for turtle art
ala Cherlin) we have the "tractor" metaphor
going (fits with those waves of grain). The
Mandelbrot is presented as the work
CropCircle tractors, a subtype of Tractor
per farmworld.py. http://bit.ly/k0yKXj
I post about all this here because, yes, I think
this is a pretty futuristic offering and a pattern for
others to imitate. I also enjoy all the discussion,
such as with Milo about cryptography and its
twisted history. Lots of good ideas here, some
of which I pick up and apply in my work, others of
which I file for later.
Kirby
kirby urner
> Good morning math futurists --
>
And now, good evening. Some days later.
Adding days to calendar dates is no mean feat and quickly
takes us into the messy world of leap years and emperors
greedy for fame and glory, stealing form February. A lot
of budding "pure math" heads are probably just running in
terror and/or frustration from such apparently ad hoc rules,
unable to abide the "contrived nature" of it all.
They escape the temporal into the Platonic realm, where
Time scarcely exists. So many headaches seem to go
away, when Time is no longer an issue.
> Just catching up on recent posts, also bouncing over
> to math-teach @ Drexel which I frequent, and Sean's
> Wittgenstein list, with its philosophy of mathematics
> and so on.
>
Ray Monk considers Wittgenstein's Remarks on the
Foundations of Mathematics to be one of the top 10
philosophy books of the 20th century.[0] No one says
he's not biased. It's obviously *his* list.
That being said, having a philosopher or two in one's
corner, especially a "top 10" is good for PR, as it
tends to both anchor a rhetoric and emanate an
aesthetic. The phrase "we could do worse" is
sometimes said in sincere appreciation for what
we've got.
> The math curriculum I'm teaching is being written by
> the chairman of our little virtual nation, a dictatorship.
>
Steve Holden. Current PSF chairman.
He's still writing it (this math curriculum). I'm calling it
a "math curriculum" because, in my book, the fences
running between computer science and logic are
more a manifestation of the laziness of an over-
specialized analytic philosophy than of anything
beneficial or helpful to our progeny.
> It's done over the wire with terminal services, with all
> the software running on the back end, although it's
> possible to somewhat duplicate the setup locally
> (not supported, hard to do).
>
Ellipse (student version of Eclipse) running on a remote
desktop hosted by a server. Lots of screen shots in my
Flickr Photostream (thekirbster).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/sets/72157625646071793/
> The group theory aspect, which I've been writing
> about on edu-sig (internal list, open archive), is
> not front and center, in that the goal of this course
> is to develop mastery of a machine executable
> grammar, a logic, crafted by our dictator and
> supplemented with Italian styling (Martelli & Co.).
>
The machine executable grammar is Python and
our dictator is Guido van Rossum (aka GvR).
> It's not as fast as a Ferrari, but sometimes speed
> is not what you're most interested in, when it
> comes to attracting passengers.
>
Your code my run orders of magnitude more slowly
than d hand crafted in C, but on the other
hand your productivity as an author / developer may
be orders of magnitude greater as well.
> With only about six files of native code (a math
> language), we're able to generate a Mandelbrot Set,
> follow Wolfram's 256 rules, and play Conway's
> Game of Life. This is all done by "farming" a
> rank-2 (dim 2) array of ASCII characters ("ascii
> waves of grain") so as not to overburden the
> back end servers, which are already running
> Ellipse, a student version of Eclipse (free and
> open source, like the Apache stuff).
>
The student in PSU systems science are going
wild with the Ruby + Sketchup combination, with
3D tessellations, not necessarily Conway's rules
(nor Wolfram's either). Maybe we'll get some
Youtubes or something.
> My students are not on the same systems science
> track as the PhD candidates at Portland State,
> who have been assisting in the background,
> with work in Blender, Sketchup and Ruby (a
> sister language out of Japan with several
> common ancestors if you study your heritage --
> more on math-thinking-l).
>
> Nate and John Driscoll have both delved into a
> Game of Life on Sketchup which they're using to
> build primitive cityscapes ala the Blender
> cuicidator (city generator). Here's an over the
> shoulder shot from the Voodoo House (not
> my fault they practice acupuncture in the living
> room).
>
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/5732014094/in/photostream
> (adjacent shots for more context)
>
> I'll post a link to a screen shot of the Mandelbrot
> pretty soon (I'm away from my studio at the
> moment). Instead of a "turtle" (for turtle art
> ala Cherlin) we have the "tractor" metaphor
> going (fits with those waves of grain). The
> Mandelbrot is presented as the work
> CropCircle tractors, a subtype of Tractor
> per farmworld.py. http://bit.ly/k0yKXj
>
Here we go. Running on the server at last
(somewhere in Illinois):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/5744343881/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Tractor comes from the same root as Tractatus and
Traction. Has the meaning of "pull" (tractare), or "drag or
draw across a tract" (tract has same root). There's a
basic idea of doing work. In fact, I'm liking Tractor better
than Worker these days (as a pedagogical focus), though
they of course do go together in retro iconography and
"socialist realism" ala Shepard Fairey & Co.
http://www.sovlit.com/pics/tractor.jpg
http://www.soviethistory.org/images/Large/1939/plough_tractor.jpg
http://thepeoplescube.com
http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8600
http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2009/05/more-developments.html
> I post about all this here because, yes, I think
> this is a pretty futuristic offering and a pattern for
> others to imitate. I also enjoy all the discussion,
> such as with Milo about cryptography and its
> twisted history. Lots of good ideas here, some
> of which I pick up and apply in my work, others of
> which I file for later.
>
> Kirby
>