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How My Little Pony turned a little girl into a computer scientist
- frossie 17y agoWell, I read that as "If you have that kind of sciencey/geeky mind, you'll see math everywhere - even in some dumb plastic pony".
- sumeeta 17y agoYeah, I don't know. I feel like we all had something like this when we were tiny.
- yagibear 17y agoA diamond in the rough! (in the literal sense) Great to see the spirit of curiosity and intellect alive in the most unlikely of circumstances.
- ars 17y agoHu? You make it seem like she grew up in a 3rd world country sorting garbage for a living, and found a pony which changed her life. What's unlikely about her life? And why's she a diamond in the rough? She probably when to school like everyone else, and the pony had nothing to do with it. It was just a prop.
- cynicalkane 17y agoA diamond "in the rough" is not a diamond surrounded by roughness, but rather an unpolished diamond. Or at least that's how gemcutters use the term. The idea that a "diamond in the rough" is related to sorting diamonds from junk is probably a folk etymology.
- roundsquare 17y agoSo you are saying she is an unpolished diamond? Or was? Perhaps, but no more than any other budding mathematician/computer scientist.
- admanrs 17y agoreally thought this was going to be a Fake Steve Jobs post about Jonathan Schwartz: http://www.fakesteve.net/2010/02/my-little-pony-a-look-back.html http://www.fakesteve.net/2010/02/my-little-pony-a-look-back....
- endtime 17y agoThis is entirely about a very bright little girl and not at all about My Little Pony. If you have the right mind, you'll see the math in whatever you're focused on - radios, Legos, or dolls.
- blahedo 17y agoyyyes, sort of---but when someone says that their, I dunno, Erector set taught them about careful engineering and design, we don't tend to say "this is entirely about a very bright little boy (or girl) and not at all about Erector sets". Is that because construction sets tend to be more associated with boys? Almost any time I see a comment of the form "X taught me about Y when I was little", it usually really means "I was inspired to discover Y by some feature of X", not so much that X was an edutainment toy designed to teach Y. So why not X=My Little Pony?
- endtime 17y agoI don't think recursive braiding of hair is ever something that's been suggested by My Little Pony toys in the same way construction is encouraged by Lego.
- gcheong 17y agoSounds like she was close to rediscovering the Mandelbrot set.
- johnl 17y agoSure does. Boys could do that to but are too busy demonstrating that Force = Mass * Acceleration.
- sukuriant 17y agoPersonally, I find it interesting to see this young person's mathematical mind manifest itself in such a way. She apparently adored her My Little Pony, and became consumed in pushing division into her braiding experience with it. Sure it was a prop, and she would have likely started doing the same thing elsewhere; but, it's engaging to see such an origin.
- camccann 17y agoDrifting slightly off-topic--the self-similar structure of cauliflower is neat, but is put to shame by a closely related plant. Behold, the king of recursive food, the ultimate fractal vegetable: Romanesco Broccoli. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/Fractal_Broccoli.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/Fractal_B...
- joeycfan 17y agoI'm just pleased there's a Harvey Mudd College. Does Kirk know about this?