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That fractal that's been up on my wall for years

chriskw.xyz

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Re: That fractal that's been up on my wall for years

#31

Post by chriskw »

baq wrote: post #30

This went much deeper and harder than expected. One has to admire the dedication. Question to the author: what would you recommend to hang on my kid’s wall today?

I'm by no means a parenting expert, but my answer would be anything related to something they feel passion or wonder for in the moment. I snuck in a paragraph near the end about burnout. At the root of the problem for me was that I lost the feeling of fascination and curiosity I had for math and programming, and doing this write-up helped me tap into that feeling of childlike wonder that used to come easily.

Re: That fractal that's been up on my wall for years

#32

Post by chriskw »

tcshit wrote: post #28
leephillips wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that it on the left in the last image?

Yeah, maybe it is. It would be cool to make it much bigger, frame it and put it on the wall. Or create a mosaic tiled artwork, similar to Knuth’s dragon curve wall.

Yeah, it's in the last image and in the thumbnail at very top (which I realize now is really hard to spot on mobile), intentionally not in the spotlight to leave space for the twist at the end.

https://chriskw.xyz/images/fractal/thumbnail.jpg

I think it would work perfectly as a mosaic eventually, but for the time being I'm perfectly content with the "rustic" 8x11 graph paper sized one taped to the wall. Currently planning to put up a slice of the orthotopeflower as a companion piece once I find matches for the colored pencils I used back then.

Re: That fractal that's been up on my wall for years

#33

Post by speeder »

chriskw wrote: post #21
CliffStoll wrote: post #20

Outstanding work and a delightful read.

Thanks Cliff, it means a ton coming from you! The videos from you and all the other folks on Numberphile always inspired me to see the beauty in math growing up :)

Please you two, make an awesome YouTube vídeo out of this. It is fascinating and beatiful and deserves a chance to viralize a little :)

Re: That fractal that's been up on my wall for years

#34

Post by Tade0 »

> Deciding to delegate to a future version of me that knows more math

Relatable. Huge part of my decision on what degree to pursue was a list of problems (mostly linear algebra) I needed to solve, but didn't have the guidance (and internet connection) to.

Re: That fractal that's been up on my wall for years

#35

Post by winnit »

shermantanktop wrote: post #10
entropicdrifter wrote: post #9

Kinda looks like a propeller

Things with four arms that all curve the same way unfortunately tend to look swastika-ish.

The unfortunate thing here is that the swastika was appropriated by a genocidal regime. The symbol still has a totally different life in India and Japan.

Re: That fractal that's been up on my wall for years

#38

Post by leni536 »

leni536 wrote: post #7

Got a bit nerd-sniped by this and came up with an L-system that fills out (I think) "the wallflower": https://onlinetools.com/math/l-system-generator?draw=AB&skip... edit: On second thought, this probably generates the other fractal, but I'm not sure.

Found a space-filling curve for the wallflower:

https://onlinetools.com/math/l-system-generator?draw=ABCD&sk...

The previous one fills out the Koch island.

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