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this is awesome. how'd you stumble onto it?
by long 16y ago
this is awesome. how'd you stumble onto it?
- muon 16y agoI found this via Futility Closet, which a constant source of really interesting stuff. (http://www.futilitycloset.com/ http://www.futilitycloset.com/) Initially, I thought it's too good to be true, later found references in Wikipedia and Mathworld, and finally started to believe in it.
- eru 16y agoBelieve in it? This is math, you can check.
- jtbigwoo 16y agoNormal people don't have the tools to check the math on a formula that involves 500-digit numbers. It's not like I'm going to pop out my TI-80 and graph it. This formula is cool, but it's only a bit more accessible than the human genome.
- orangecat 16y agoNormal people don't have the tools to check the math on a formula that involves 500-digit numbers. Sure we do, for flexible values of "normal": from decimal import getcontext, Decimal getcontext().prec = 600 n = Decimal(960939379918958884971672962127852754715004339660129306651505519271702802395266424689642842174350718121267153782770623355993237280874144307891325963941337723487857735749823926629715517173716995165232890538221612403238855866184013235585136048828693337902491454229288667081096184496091705183454067827731551705405381627380967602565625016981482083418783163849115590225610003652351370343874461848378737238198224849863465033159410054974700593138339226497249461751545728366702369745461014655997933798537483143786841806593422227898388722980000748404719) # ignore floors, just using integer arguments f = lambda x,y: (y/17 * Decimal(2)**(-17*x - (y%17))) % 2 results = {} dhalf = Decimal('0.5') for x in xrange(106): for y in xrange(17): # this takes a while results[x,y] = '*' if f(Decimal(x), Decimal(y+n))>dhalf else ' ' # this prints reversed for some reason unless we reverse the x iteration for y in xrange(17): print(''.join(results[x,y]+' ' for x in xrange(105,-1,-1)))
- eru 16y agoIndeed. And lots of computers come with Python or something equally capable of arithmetic installed nowadays. (And if you don't have the means to check it, it's probably better to remain agnostic, instead of starting to believe random things.)
- muon 16y agoBelieve the blog post, I don't doubt the math.
- eru 16y agoOK.