Comments on: Comments on 18972

Post number 18972

alms — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 14:38:59 -0800

Mathematician Henrik Lenstra was intrigued by a blank space in he middle of a drawing by MC Escher. Over two years he managed to describe the mathematical structure of the drawing, project what should go in the missing space and produce an extraordanary animation of the result.

By: fishfucker

fishfucker — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 14:48:48 -0800

great link. thanks! obligatory [this is good]

By: me3dia

me3dia — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 14:51:40 -0800

That's really cool! The addition blends perfectly, and creates an interesting fractal effect on the arches.

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 14:54:09 -0800

ooh! An extension of Escher. ::gets all tingly:: Thank you!

By: quonsar

quonsar — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 14:55:03 -0800

i love m.c. escher! that man can sure busta rhyme! no, really, i DO love escher!

By: The Michael The

The Michael The — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 14:55:19 -0800

Isn't this a repost? Exceptionally cool regardless, though.

By: perplexed

perplexed — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 14:58:49 -0800

Wow. That was great. Worth downloading the movie. Thanks.

By: o2b

o2b — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 15:02:57 -0800

wicked cool.

By: madprops

madprops — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 15:08:08 -0800

*yawn* boring... just kidding, it's cool. nice link alms!

By: zpousman

zpousman — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 15:13:08 -0800

No need to discuss anything here folks. It's just everybody saying how cool the links are. Damn are those links cool.

By: rift2001

rift2001 — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 15:24:34 -0800

That is really cool. I'm sure it would be even more cool if I could understand how he did, but its still cool nonetheless.

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 15:25:44 -0800

*head implodes*

By: eyeballkid

eyeballkid — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 15:31:41 -0800

Method to madness: 1) Download both versions of 10MB .mpg animations (0,1 and 1,1). 2) Share them out to twelve lab computers, alternating between them...0,1/1,1/0,1/1,1... 3) Start media player on each, set to full screen and repeat. 4) Turn off lights. 5) Curl up in fetal position in office chair and weep. 6) Disappear.

By: MUD

MUD — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 15:31:57 -0800

Nice one. About Henrik Lenstra: He has been known, when walking to a friend's house, to factor the street address into prime numbers in order to better fix it in his mind. Ah, but don't we all?

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 15:42:53 -0800

Ah, but don't we all? Actually, as I've mentioned before, I see and remember numbers by placing them within a logarithmic spiral - much like the one Lenstra uses to reconstruct Escher's picture.

By: gleuschk

gleuschk — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 16:11:56 -0800

A bigger version of Escher's print. Lenstra's homepage at Leiden with (p)reprints (though, sadly, none about Escher). He's a stud.

By: slipperywhenwet

slipperywhenwet — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 16:16:19 -0800

An important part of the math behind this is the fact that Lenstra realized that the way Escher distorted the plane was an approximation of a conformal mapping. Conformal mappings (nice pictures in that second link) are really powerful tools that were developed by, among others, Rieman who was one of the all time great ninja hacker mage lords of math.

By: beth

beth — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 16:20:29 -0800

Just for the record, I have to say that an untold fraction of the wonder of Escher's creations would be lost to the world had he never used LSD. Good thing he didn't live in America under the War On (Some) Drugs, eh? Absolutely wondrous link, thanks for sharing it.

By: gleuschk

gleuschk — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 16:25:42 -0800

one of the all time great ninja hacker mage lords of math. *spit-takes* Um, whoa. I just changed what I want to be when I grow up.

By: beth

beth — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 16:39:29 -0800

re: all time great ninja hacker mage lords of math, who else would you add to the list? I think Gauss goes on there, surely. vacapinta: your number spiral sounds fascinating and extremely cool. Also, thanks for pointing to that thread about synesthesia. Sorry I missed that one, it was good. ObSynesthesia: two is yellow, three is most certainly red, and four is blue. Five is green, six is purple, I dunno about seven, it's sorta shadowy, but eight is orange.

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 16:42:45 -0800

note: My previous comment seems self-absorbed but is, in actuality, a genuine plea for anyone else who thinks like this or knows of a name for this condition to contact me (email in my profile) Thanks.

By: mogwai

mogwai — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 16:51:38 -0800

All right who slipped the acid into my coffee?

By: manero

manero — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 17:02:26 -0800

vacapinta, i would be that if you went to a hypotherapist and took a mathematician along with, you could get the spiral plotted out. i'd be interested in seeing the results. i wonder what sorts of math secrets could be unlocked with your spiral. manero

By: Tacodog

Tacodog — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 17:33:24 -0800

Makes my brain itch. Nice link!

By: slipperywhenwet

slipperywhenwet — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 18:49:28 -0800

re: all time great ninja hacker mage lords of math, who else would you add to the list? I think Gauss goes on there, surely.
Gauss would totally be on there. Riemann (of course, I had to misspelled his name in the first post) was one of Gauss' students, and a professor I know claims, the only one Gauss respected.
I think the most badass of the bunch has to be Euler (pronounced "Oiler") who is actually the most prolific scientist ever, with, I think, something like 700 volumes to his name - some of which were written after he went blind, via dictation to his son. There isn't a single area of modern math he didn't have a finger in. There's also the Bernoullis who had a sort of family mathematical Mafia going. There's Lord Kelvin, who Neil Stephenson's written about in his article on the laying of the FLAG cable - Kelvin was an early telecom pioneer. And of course, Archimedes came this close to inventing calculus two thousand years before Newton.
Finally, I have to admit, the only woman mathematician I can think of is Agnesi which is purely patriarchal bullshit - there should be tons of major women mathematicians, I think they just haven't been recognised.

By: scribblative

scribblative — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 18:55:11 -0800

Man, this thread just reminds me I really need to pull out my copy of Godel, Escher, Bach and read it again...

By: evinrude

evinrude — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 20:42:03 -0800

Wow, repeating what everyone else has said: mad link. In re: women math ninjas -- the two that always spring to my mind are Sonya Kovalevsky (I seem to recall that she had an affair with fellow math ninja Weierstrass) and of course Emmy Noether, at whose shrine all algebraists pray nightly.

By: GriffX

GriffX — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 20:44:12 -0800

Man, this thread just reminds me I really need to pull out my copy of Godel, Escher, Bach and read it again... No kidding - and read it voluntarily this time. (Education is wasted on the young)

By: evinrude

evinrude — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 20:51:16 -0800

GriffX -- you were forced to read Godel...? At what institution of learning was this? I'll send my children there, if I ever have any. Or attend myself...

By: gleuschk

gleuschk — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 21:32:19 -0800

at whose shrine all algebraists pray nightly. Yep, just finished.

By: alms

alms — Wed, 07 Aug 2002 05:59:54 -0800

Thanks for sharing the Escher/LSD connection. I never knew he'd partaken of the sacrament (though it's not at all surprising). Does anyone know of any links describing Escher's use of LSD? A google search just reveals a lot of people describing how they saw things that looked like Escher drawings while they were on acid!

By: homunculus

homunculus — Wed, 07 Aug 2002 10:32:28 -0800

All right who slipped the acid into my coffee? There's also DMT if that's more to your liking.

By: gwint

gwint — Wed, 07 Aug 2002 11:33:17 -0800

a little off-topic, but yesterday's NYT science section had a cool article on Frances E. Allen, a female computer pioneer I'd never heard of... and that reminded me of Ada Byron-Lovelace, a chick cool enough to have a programming language named after her...