code

03
Apr
a work of art with a stick with 3 draping wires full of paper strips and beads

Serendipitous Oulipo Haiku

I copied, pasted, cut, poked, threaded, beaded, coded, and finished Serendipitous Oulipo Haiku. Four hundred and eighteen haiku when rearranged by first, second, and third lines yield 418 x 418 x 418 poems. That is 73,034,632 haiku that often work, sometimes seem profound, and other times are broken
3 min read
23
Jan
an electric work of art with white circuit-board like charges on a dark blue background

Charged

I created the following composition while playing with code as part of Genuary. I wanted to get the feeling of a discharge of energy. Everytime the code is run, a unique new piece is generated. Below are some of the infinite varieties.
1 min read
16
Sep
pair of sand pipers on parallelepipeds with an ocean in the background and the matrix fro the volume.

Western Sand Parallelepiper

Another Math bird in the series! This one was inspired by my 17yr old discussing her math homework of deriving the volume for a parallelepiped. So of course It spawned the thought of parallelepiped sand castles.
1 min read
10
Sep
a list of mathober prompts

Get Ready for Mathober!

This year’s Mathober pieces will be posted here. Last year I posted prompts for the first year of Mathober when I wanted to do some daily doodles with no strings attached. The activity was a lot of fun. There were some some great pieces from John Golden and Foldster on Twitter. Prompts this year hav
1 min read
10
Sep
Spiraling Vaux’s Swifts

Spiraling Vaux’s Swifts

Just like solar eclipses, Vaux’s swifts really are a life experience. Watching them funnel into a chimney in a vortex of flitting feathers is just amazing. I had the wonderful experience of watching them funnel into the chimney at dusk in Salem, Oregon (my home). So here is the next math bird in the
1 min read
06
Sep
a birdhouse with violet green swallow head packed like a gasket and the math written on the house with parents flying

Packing Violet Green Swallows

I enjoyed watching the swallows this summer. I couldn’t help but imagine that they were packing circles in their little birdhouse portal. Life is full of such precious moments.
1 min read
22
Aug
A pileated woodpecker with morse code and the branches of letters with the waves shown in a forest

Pileated Woodpecker

Another math bird in the series. I am pretty convinced that pileated woodpeckers communicate in their own form of morse code. I wonder what their frequency is when they are excavating?
23
Jan
Locomotive Rose Art

Locomotive Rose Art

The equations used to produce these plots are in the family of rose curves. This particular form is composed of two curves added together. It almost feels like there is some locomotion happening in the visualization, and it is fun to think about the gears and shafts might that make this pattern. r =
1 min read
14
Jan
Parabolic Beams

Parabolic Beams

I love thinking of parabolas as being formed with a directrix and focus. Coming from a background in trajectory analysis, I find the abstract relationships of the curve to the point and line beautiful. When a light shines through the focus of a parabolic mirror, the light reflected is orthogonal to
1 min read
06
Jan
Code for Two-Button Calculator

Code for Two-Button Calculator

A two-button calculator can only perform two operations (like multiply by two and add five). The Global Math Project is a wonderful resource for math learning and play and has a great resource for two-button problems in this Global Math Project PDF. Another variation of this sort of problem is done
1 min read

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