what I would consider "cool" high school math

[kirby urner]

http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2015/08/high-school-stem.html

(talks about doing stuff in a REPL "repple" which is shop talk for interactive console).

Kirby

[kirby urner]

Using a REPL is like using a calculator, where hitting Enter means 'evaluate me' (an expression).

One often uses a REPL in conjunction with a way of stacking up multiple expressions within statements to form scripts.

Mathematica, SAGE, Jupyter... these a give a similar console.  MathCad is more like a spreadsheet.

https://flic.kr/p/vLby2U  # <--- an IDE with a REPL.

At your last Python User Group meetup in Portland we saw how the Jupyter front end could be wired to a computer algebra system.

http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2015/08/ppug-2015827.html  (the CAS is called Maxima and goes back to 1968)

A futuristic math class involves sampling quite a few REPLs.  So many are free.  Another good one:  J from Jsoftware.com

Kirby

PS:  here's a story board for introducing quadrays partly as a way of reinforcing vector concepts more generally:

http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2015/09/manga-on-mul.html

There's some use of shop talk in that __mul__ is Python for "multiply" and we're talking about area and volume concepts (related to 2nd & 3rd powering).


Alphabet Soup:

REPL:  read evaluate print loop
IDE:  interactive development environment

[kirby urner]

On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 10:17 AM, kirby urner <kirby...@gmail.com> wrote:

<< SNIP >>
 

PS:  here's a story board for introducing quadrays partly as a way of reinforcing vector concepts more generally:

http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2015/09/manga-on-mul.html

There's some use of shop talk in that __mul__ is Python for "multiply" and we're talking about area and volume concepts (related to 2nd & 3rd powering).

Also, most people will have not concept of a Caltrop as a shape, so I added these pictures:

http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2015/09/caltrops.html

The Caltrop versus Jack distinction defines the quadray versus xyz apparatus.

(see Wikipedia re Quadray Coordinates -- a sidebar topic and for some a stepping stone to additional related topics)

[Bradford Hansen-Smith]

Kirby, thought you might be interested if you are not already familiar with this woven collapsible system.

The cube and tetrahedron are dynamically demonstrated as a single system within a spherical matrix. Consistent to the same radial measure one figure moves into the other sliding through continuous changing volume/area relationships. This weave offers a unique view to traditional understanding about the intimate relationships between these figures. Let me know if you would like more info about the weave.

Brad

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[kirby urner]

Interesting you should mention said weave, as just one picture to the left of my recap (of which I'm linking to below), is this picture:

https://flic.kr/p/y8P6zR  ("star" of rods interweaving)

Are you familiar with this geometry toy (we could call it) named "Omni Star" in the blue box?

It looks like the same weave or close to it maybe.

I took some more pictures of it this morning, getting out the instructions, after I saw your post and attachment.

https://flic.kr/p/yawBUd  (from here to the right, until you get to the cute dog pix).

Thanks for sharing that!

The BuckyBall kit shown in that same (top) picture is something I actually worked on, as a writer (not to be confused with the tiny magnet BuckyBalls, deemed too dangerous to be a toy if left around small children, which older children might do -- true of a lot of things though).

http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2015/08/commercial-product.html  (early 1990s project)

Omni-Star I had nothing to do with, just I've long been interested in the geometry toys business and worked in it some.

Other ramblings, toy-related:

I was gifted some of these rare treasures (at least hard to find in the big box stores) thanks to one of Fuller's chief archivists: Trevor Blake.  I'd been helping him with moving the archive around by rental van, to / from storage.

Trevor, did not work directly for Fuller (just as I never met Wittgenstein), but rather picked up where Joe Moore left off, another Archivist with a superior chronofile documenting Bucky Fuller's contributions to humanity.  Joe sent Trevor literally a U-Haul's worth of information.

The Muhammad Ali book is from another friend, who also lets me display his well appointed Wittgenstein library (we're both students of LW's, 3rd generation, and Nietzsche too to some extent (I concentrated on philosophy at Princeton, did my thesis under Rorty et al). 

[ BTW, Sean Wilson thinks it's disrespectful to just say LW, a mangling of a saint's name (he's a listowner in LW circles), but I also write EJA and RBF.  It's the shorthand of business memorandums Sean, no time to "write for the ages" every day.   http://seanwilson.org/forum/  ]

Another toy I worked on directly was called Strange Attractors which never made it to market for legal reasons.

Strange Attractors was another ball and magnet system but with varying lengths, reminiscent of ZomeTool but heavier, big constructions therefore fragile.

Here's a picture of the box (I did the graphics with a ray tracer, with final production values added by Cary Kittner, then Quimby):

https://flic.kr/p/JotCu  (Strange Attractors, one of the few shrink wrapped copies).

Kirby

[Bradford Hansen-Smith]

Thanks Kirby, I am not familiar with the Omni star. This is not a woven system. It looks like six individual systems constructed to interlocked and slide in and out on each other. The weave in the pictures I sent has a vector equilibrium patterned center of eight triangles and six squares that will collapse in three axial directions into a tight bundle of two different configurations. The only similarity between the two systems seems to be that neither have fixed fulcrum points. Other than that there is no similarity. If you would like more information about this woven spherical joint let me know and I can send you the full paper.

[kirby urner]

You could be right, I have not assembled it.  

My impression was it was a continuous / contiguous network with self interweaving properties but I could be wrong.  I didn't photograph the joints.  

Hardly anyone calls anything a "vector equilibrium" except someone at least tangentially impacted by the Bucky stuff so at least I'd count us as cousins, however distant.  :-D

Sure, send me the full paper if you would.  I'd be grateful.

Kirby

[Bradford Hansen-Smith]

Kirby, attached find full paper handout from a few of years ago. It has yet to be updated.

You can find more about the possibilities of this woven system at http://stickweaving.com/gallery.html
Brad

[kirby urner]

Wow, what an amazing gallery, I'd not seen that before.  Thanks Brad!

Definitely not the same as Omni Star, which I tried to build yesterday morning, making it to around step 17 when I gave up for lack of patience.

You've done a whole lot with that weave, most creative.  Have you heard of the conference Bridges?

Bridges claims to be about bridging Art and Math but they mainly mean Visual Arts i.e. writing and music are not covered.

Your gallery shows you to be highly eligible.  Lots of Bucky fans frequent Bridges, which has a traveling roadshow version called Mosaic:

http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2015/02/a-tale-of-two-logos.html  (slides from Mosaic at Portland State)

Bridges was in Baltimore this year, is slated for Norway next.

Speaking of geometry toys, another one I'm following is LuxBlox, just released this year:

https://vimeo.com/138867030

Kirby

[Bradford Hansen-Smith]

Thank you, yes, I have participated in the Bridges conferences, showing only folded circles. I can no longer afford the expense of traveling so I have not been to the conferences for the last 3-4 years.

The weaving I have done for my own interest with a few scattered classes and workshops over the years. The website as it stands is virtually inactive and mostly just reference.

The trouble with the idea of bridging art and math is that separation is mostly the condition of a cultural mind set and in creating connections they are usually in the style of what is most favored at the time. Shared values often get lost in designing bridges. There are wonderful and beautiful things being produced by people all over the world that do not see a separation. In my opinion the separation is academic.

 The LuxBlox has a unique blend of characteristics as a modeling unit. It will be interesting to see where it goes.

[kirby urner]

I was thinking to go to Bridges in Baltimore this summer and co-present with a colleague named Koski, who has gone to two Bridges prior (but not presented).

My visual art project was only conceptual though, a ray tracing, suggesting beveled faces held together, ship-in-a-bottle style, by a tetrahedron inside, tugging on face centers (the six edges align to face diagonals).

The paper I submitted was lambasted, in part because I referenced Wikipedia.  The evaluator did not take into a account that it's a Wikipedia article I mostly wrote (on Fuller's Synergetics).  Koski's paper received similar treatment, dismissed as shallow.  However, as someone familiar with that branch of math (space-filling with tetrahedrons, in Koski's case phi-scaled), I know it to be otherwise.

In other words, from my angle, Bridges has been ruined by its trolls.

My write-up of that chapter is here:

http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2015/04/trite-math.html

Kirby

[Bradford Hansen-Smith]

Kirby, take heart. My first paper was peer reviewed by a person acting like they had no peers. It was a tug-of-war experience that was not pleasant, but useful. It must be very difficult for Bridges that now has grown beyond the boundaries of where they started, to find a way to not overload their capacity. As with any well used bridge or thoroughfare trolls always seem to appear.

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[kirby urner]

Yeah, I know they need gatekeepers and want a mix that earns them respect.  That's why any submitted papers need to conform to their font and format specs in fine detail, so the final publication looks academic and uniform.  That quite a few attendees are Bucky fans is another related problem in that his stuff fuels enthusiasm and a math-informed fringe, but then Bucky himself is a controversial figure in academia, even still, and the likes of myself who take his core tetra-voluming for granted (have for decades) as a legit premise (axiom whatever) look like a potential threat to respectability.  A conference more secure of itself like OSCON, for which I'm a proposal reader, has no need to be impolitic to defend turf.  Bridges in contrast is still highly amateur and improvised in flavor.  That's fine.  A learning process.  It's easy to be in touch with the individuals I was hoping to meet, through other venues.

Kirby