Math for Artists: Exponents and Radicals(cattail.nu)
cattail.nu
Math for Artists: Exponents and Radicals
http://www.cattail.nu/school_web/math107/math_artists.html
4 comments
Actually as both artist and mathematician, the first thing I had to do is 'translate' her visualization into something I could relate to my visualization on a given subject. Hmmm--- that is not really clear; I suppose what I mean is that we all 'see' things differently, the trick is to line things up! BTW, I didn't really notice the colors, so for me at least they made little difference...
When I imagine mathematical operations like these, I sometimes imagine numbers moving around, distorting, and fading in and out in a way representative of the calculation. For instance, “x^2 * x” would show the x on the right moving onto the x on the left, and the 2 fading down to be replaced by a 3 fading in, like an odometer. I’d like to some day create a Flash animation of some calculation showing those movements.
Looks just like variablekitten from Abstruse Goose: http://abstrusegoose.com/345
I wonder why numerals are used to represent 2 and 3 in some places, but stacked boxes are used in others?
The idea appears to be that artists find the use of colors easier to memorize / mentally manipulate compared to letters for variable identifiers. I'm not an artist, so I'm curious if others find this to be true.