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Topic: New forum section: math? (Read 1615 times) |
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Frederik
 
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New forum section: math?
« on: Oct 8th, 2004, 12:17am » |
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Hi,
Scattered through the different forum sections, there are questions related to that most dreaded of artist banes: mathematics (pure or disguised as physics).
There are many books out there that'll teach you all you need and, here's the sting, a whole lot more. Practical maths is a very small subset of the field of mathematics.
For me and undoubtedly many others, Processing has been a springboard to a whole new world: cellullar automata, chaotic attractors, genetic algorithms, ...
Unfortunately, a lifetime's too short to research everything yourself (a modern time renaissance man would be severely overworked...) How many of you, having read one of Hawking's popular books, have picked up a science textbook on cosmology? (BTW. don't, dull doesn't begin to describe the experience  )
Sometimes all you need is that one single equation, the little tip of a vast edifice of maths (interesting yes, important yes, relevant for the layman no).
I'm wondering if it's wortwhile to devote a new section of the forum to cover the basic maths, separate from programming issues or specific applications. A place where you can put questions like "how do I rotate this thingy?", "How can I find the intersection of this and that?",... No lemma's, no proofs, maths distilled to a mathematician's nightmare: a practical tool.
I have to admit that there are more exciting prospects than explaining vector rotation. But still, it could help some very talented people make pieces they wouldn't have made otherwise. And for left-brainers like me, that's more satisfying than our own feeble attempts at esthetics 
What do you think: would this be useful and appropriate for the processing forum?
Seeya,
Frederik
www.wmute.org
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| « Last Edit: Oct 8th, 2004, 12:18am by Frederik » |
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fjen
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Re: New forum section: math?
« Reply #1 on: Oct 8th, 2004, 1:35am » |
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i think that's a nice idea. although there are lot's of sites out there that do more or less that .. but a processing (processified examples) version/forum-section would be nice and handy.
/F
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