Indy Telecom & Industrial Media

On the same note as the previous post, here are some Scilab renderings of the slightly more interesting Plücker’s conoid.

And of course, here’s the code. Substitute N with the number of folds in the surface, where (quite obviously) the period of oscillation around the Z axis is given by 2π/n.

//Plücker’s conoid
stacksize (10000000);
num_points = 50;
u = linspace (0, 2*(%pi), num_points);
v= linspace (0, (1/2)*(%pi), num_points);
[U, V] = meshgrid (u, v);
x = V.*cos(U);
y = V.*sin(U);
z = sin(N.*U);
mesh (x, y , z);
surf(x, y, z,'edgecol','blu');

It’s been a while since I did something interesting with math on my blog, so I figured I’d go back to some old favorites. I’ve done the Cross Cap before, so here’s a variation — the Pseudo Cross Cap.

And of course, as always, here’s the code code to render them in Scilab. The code has been tested on Scilab 4.0. Enjoy!

//Pseudo Cross Cap
stacksize (10000000);
num_points = 50;
u = linspace (0, 2*(%pi), num_points);
v= linspace (0, (1/2)*(%pi), num_points);
[U, V] = meshgrid (u, v);
x = (1 .- (U.*U)).*sin(V);
y = (1 .- (U.*U)).*sin(2.*V);
z = U;
mesh (x, y , z);
surf(x, y, z,'edgecol','red');

More Taleb, yes.  An excellent essay in the Edge Foundation’s Third Culture by Taleb on statistics, and how it is often misused.

And here is an interesting analogy from the essay, comparing a Thanksgiving turkey fed consistently until its unfortunate end, and IndyMac’s performance.

Oh my.

One of the things that I keep meaning to write about is Bathsheba Grossman’s amazing sculptures.

She creates some very interesting artwork and I have been a fan of her work for the longest time. For the most part, she creates sculptures that are inspired from math and science.

To that end, she has a math sculptures collection which features various “topologically-inspired” artwork. My personal favorite is the Soliton, which is simple, elegant and simply too beautiful to resist!

And there is also her math models collection, which, as the name suggests, has various math models. And since I do have a thing for minimal surfaces, I really like her Schwarz D Surface.

And as a (former, now dormant) graphics geek, I was also very impressed by her 120-Cell Sculpture. The only thing that could make that sculpture better is if one could play around and change the inner reference points for each inner layer.

Other than these, she also has an impressive collection of science and math inspired 3d models etched inside glass crystals. All the models are inspired from math or science and are just as fascinating.

Sadly, my favorite (the menger sponge, displayed above) is no longer available; however she has made available that and several other models as downloads.

I am rarely impressed by a lot of art-work trying to portray science, but Bathsheba’s work is truly awe-inspiring. Of course, that could be because she is someone who studied mathematics but became an artist.

So all you fine folks now know what to get me for Christmas!