5 ms·

David Eppstein's Wikipedia Gallery Contributions

133 points by vinchuco 9y ago

irmc 9y ago
https://goo.gl/7xiFXm https://goo.gl/7xiFXm you should go visit this website as it's very interesting
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
underwoodley 9y ago
No disrespect to those who do original research, however it seems that these images, made freely available to hundreds and thousands of people seeking to educate themselves, contribute more to the advancement of human knowledge than all but the most important published theorems.
- reikonomusha 9y ago
  I’m not sure there’s a point to rank either, but it is certainly true that research and education are both complementary and monumentally important for the advancement of knowledge.
  - underwoodley 9y ago
    I guess my point is just that the utility of this kind of work seems undervalued in comparison to people proving endless minor theorems in little-read papers, which gets romanticized as 'finding out stuff no-one has ever known before'
    - joemi 9y ago
      If not for the research, though, there'd be nothing that needed explaining through illustration.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
- zellyn 9y ago
  You might like distill: https://distill.pub/about/ https://distill.pub/about/
scrooched_moose 9y ago
LucasVB is another great contributor with some fantastic animations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:LucasVB/Gallery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:LucasVB/Gallery Two personal favorites are: Line integral of a scalar field: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Line_integral_of_scalar_field.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Line_integral_of_scalar_f... and Fourier Transform: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fourier_transform_time_and_frequency_domains.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fourier_transform_time_an...
- pen2l 9y ago
  What software are these folks using to produce these images/animations?
  - scrooched_moose 9y ago
    From his tumblr: http://1ucasvb.tumblr.com/faq http://1ucasvb.tumblr.com/faq: The 3D stuff (with shadows and such) was created using the excellent, free raytracer POV-Ray. The rest were created using a custom-made PHP library that uses GD for graphics. The library adds a whole lot of functionality that isn’t present in GD or PHP: drawing anything with alpha blending, geometry and math primitives, 2D and 3D rotations (including quaternions), better anti-aliasing, object-oriented interface, etc.
    - davidy123 9y ago
      I find it disappointing that even in the litany of alternate technologies tried, there's no reference to using Web technologies, so these animations could be interactive. Obviously the author's choice, but some could benefit now and going forward.
  - emacsgifs 9y ago
    David appears to use CaRMetal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CaRMetal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CaRMetal CaRMetal - Wikipedia BTW, even if that's not the case, I've found CaRMetal exceptionally useful for drawing similar constructions.
sbpayne 9y ago
I took courses with Eppstein at UCI. I was always impressed with his ability to construct clear example diagrams to explain any question. Glad to see some of these great diagrams were shared with a wider audience :)
- dustball64 9y ago
  I wanted to take 161 with him at UCI. I heard he was great. Unfortunately I had to take it with Hirschberg (who has his picture on the Wikipedia page).. I still get PTSD from those all or nothing multi-part algorithm problems.
- allensallinger 9y ago
  He's a legend, I remember in our Graph Algorithm's class our "text book" was mostly composed of the articles that he had written. Glad to see UCI representing here.
  - kevinwang 9y ago
    The UCI campus ACM club is quite distinguished as well ;)
- spocklivelong 9y ago
  I took the advanced data structures course. That guy is chill.
- clayclay 9y ago
  He's brilliant. After learning he contributed to a massive amount of CS and Math articles on Wikipedia, Wikipedia has become my goto for those types of articles. Before that, I did not know wether or not to trust academic articles on Wikipedia.
ahelwer 9y ago
David Eppstein is a mainstay of WikiProject Computer Science[0]; I encourage anyone interested in contributing to Wikipedia in that area to refer to the group for help & support! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Computer_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Computer...
infocollector 9y ago
Beautiful! Thanks for posting.
geokon 9y ago
I hadn't reflected on it before, but it seems an unintended consequence of power users like this is that it has created a de facto wikipedia math illustration "style". Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing
jgalt212 9y ago
almost as talented as seedfeeder: NSFW!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seedfeeder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seedfeeder
niedzielski 9y ago
I've commented this before but it's worth mentioning these fantastic interactive SVGs again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cmglee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cmglee https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Burj_Khalifa_floors.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Burj_Kha...

133 points by vinchuco 9y ago

irmc 9y ago

https://goo.gl/7xiFXm https://goo.gl/7xiFXm you should go visit this website as it's very interesting

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

underwoodley 9y ago

No disrespect to those who do original research, however it seems that these images, made freely available to hundreds and thousands of people seeking to educate themselves, contribute more to the advancement of human knowledge than all but the most important published theorems.

reikonomusha 9y ago
I’m not sure there’s a point to rank either, but it is certainly true that research and education are both complementary and monumentally important for the advancement of knowledge.
- underwoodley 9y ago
  I guess my point is just that the utility of this kind of work seems undervalued in comparison to people proving endless minor theorems in little-read papers, which gets romanticized as 'finding out stuff no-one has ever known before'
  - joemi 9y ago
    If not for the research, though, there'd be nothing that needed explaining through illustration.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
zellyn 9y ago
You might like distill: https://distill.pub/about/ https://distill.pub/about/

scrooched_moose 9y ago

LucasVB is another great contributor with some fantastic animations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:LucasVB/Gallery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:LucasVB/Gallery Two personal favorites are: Line integral of a scalar field: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Line_integral_of_scalar_field.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Line_integral_of_scalar_f... and Fourier Transform: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fourier_transform_time_and_frequency_domains.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fourier_transform_time_an...

pen2l 9y ago
What software are these folks using to produce these images/animations?
- scrooched_moose 9y ago
  From his tumblr: http://1ucasvb.tumblr.com/faq http://1ucasvb.tumblr.com/faq: The 3D stuff (with shadows and such) was created using the excellent, free raytracer POV-Ray. The rest were created using a custom-made PHP library that uses GD for graphics. The library adds a whole lot of functionality that isn’t present in GD or PHP: drawing anything with alpha blending, geometry and math primitives, 2D and 3D rotations (including quaternions), better anti-aliasing, object-oriented interface, etc.
  - davidy123 9y ago
    I find it disappointing that even in the litany of alternate technologies tried, there's no reference to using Web technologies, so these animations could be interactive. Obviously the author's choice, but some could benefit now and going forward.
- emacsgifs 9y ago
  David appears to use CaRMetal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CaRMetal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CaRMetal CaRMetal - Wikipedia BTW, even if that's not the case, I've found CaRMetal exceptionally useful for drawing similar constructions.

sbpayne 9y ago

I took courses with Eppstein at UCI. I was always impressed with his ability to construct clear example diagrams to explain any question. Glad to see some of these great diagrams were shared with a wider audience :)

dustball64 9y ago
I wanted to take 161 with him at UCI. I heard he was great. Unfortunately I had to take it with Hirschberg (who has his picture on the Wikipedia page).. I still get PTSD from those all or nothing multi-part algorithm problems.
allensallinger 9y ago
He's a legend, I remember in our Graph Algorithm's class our "text book" was mostly composed of the articles that he had written. Glad to see UCI representing here.
- kevinwang 9y ago
  The UCI campus ACM club is quite distinguished as well ;)
spocklivelong 9y ago
I took the advanced data structures course. That guy is chill.
clayclay 9y ago
He's brilliant. After learning he contributed to a massive amount of CS and Math articles on Wikipedia, Wikipedia has become my goto for those types of articles. Before that, I did not know wether or not to trust academic articles on Wikipedia.

ahelwer 9y ago

David Eppstein is a mainstay of WikiProject Computer Science[0]; I encourage anyone interested in contributing to Wikipedia in that area to refer to the group for help & support! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Computer_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Computer...

infocollector 9y ago

Beautiful! Thanks for posting.

geokon 9y ago

I hadn't reflected on it before, but it seems an unintended consequence of power users like this is that it has created a de facto wikipedia math illustration "style". Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing

jgalt212 9y ago

almost as talented as seedfeeder: NSFW!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seedfeeder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seedfeeder

niedzielski 9y ago

I've commented this before but it's worth mentioning these fantastic interactive SVGs again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cmglee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cmglee https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Burj_Khalifa_floors.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Burj_Kha...