5 ms·
The Quest to Find Rectangles in a Square
- ikesau 4y agoIan Henderson's own post on the process is probably more interesting for most people here. http://ianhenderson.org/similar-rectangles/ http://ianhenderson.org/similar-rectangles/
- panic 4y agoHey, that's me! Though I mention it in the post, I also want to give a shoutout here to libcalcium, which handles the somewhat magical task of representing and comparing exact algebraic numbers: https://fredrikj.net/calcium/index.html https://fredrikj.net/calcium/index.html.
- grugagag 4y agoLoving it. Pretty good in an art sense too, playing with proportions in both a mathematical as well a visual way. Makes me want to brush up my mathematics
- aaroninsf 4y agoThis is super interesting. I am particularly curious whether the resultant series correlates with any other know series arising in other areas...
- thomasahle 4y agoWow! I had no idea you could get fun projects like this into the NYT. How did you do it? :-D
- ColinWright 4y agoThe author[0] writes a monthly column on puzzles and other recreational math. She was the author of John Horton Conway's biography[1] and many other math-related and math-adjacent things. People writing monthly columns are always under pressure to find things that are new and can be made accessible, so if you have something that fits the subject and brief, it's easy. The problem is that most things you think are fascinating, the authors/journalists won't think is interesting, so you may need to sell them on it. [0] Siobhan Roberts [1] Roberts, Siobhan (2015). "Genius at play: The curious mind of John Horton Conway." Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1620405932.
- nextaccountic 4y agoAlso John Baez's posts https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2022/12/dividing_a_square_into_similar.html https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2022/12/dividing_a_squa... https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2022/12/guillotine_partitions_and_the.html https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2022/12/guillotine_part...
- andrejguran 4y agohttps://archive.ph/qouZA https://archive.ph/qouZA
- ColinWright 4y agoOh. Gosh. I've been mentioned by name in the NY Times.
- zafka 4y agoCongrats Colin!! Next thing you know, late night TV will be calling :)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- downvotetruth 4y agoThe New York Times' effect on [a] man.
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- xianshou 4y agoAll these squares make a circle. All these squares make a circle. All these squares make a circle...
- TheRealPomax 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squircle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squircle
- kayamon 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squarial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squarial
- layer8 4y agoIs this an OEIS sequence yet?
- tromp 4y agoIt is, as of today! https://oeis.org/A359146 https://oeis.org/A359146
- JKCalhoun 4y agoI tried and came up with three of the eleven, ha ha. One of mine isn't among the eleven though. I'm too thick though to figure out if I made a mistake with it. I tried computing the ratio with algebra but I'm a little rusty.
- sleepyrectangle 4y agoThe one I came up with for 6 rectangles (divide the square down the middle on one axis, then into thirds on the other axis) I didn’t see in the 245 at the bottom of the article. I might have just skipped over it, but that one seems pretty trivial to me, so if they missed it, there must be some issue with their method. Edit: I think I misunderstood. They are interested in the number of unique ratios, not including different ways that rectangles of the same ratio could be drawn to fill a square. The pictures just show one example of how the rectangles of each ratio could fill a square. For my example, it looks like they have a square that is divided into the top third and bottom two-thirds, then the top third is divided in half, then the left half of that is divided into quarters. That’s another way of fitting six rectangles of ratio 1:1.5 into a square, besides the way I described above.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- panic 4y agoYeah, exactly -- if you're curious, here are the 1:1.5 ratio 6-rectangle dissections after disabling all the code that removes duplicates: https://i.imgur.com/jbZcpFT.png https://i.imgur.com/jbZcpFT.png
- vhcr 4y agoOnly the proportions of the rectangles matter, not their position.
- Jarmsy 4y agoThe original discussion first posted here: https://mathstodon.xyz/@johncarlosbaez/109511663915548794 https://mathstodon.xyz/@johncarlosbaez/109511663915548794
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- nickpeterson 4y agoCan we just skip to the part where 500 years from now this is essential for ftl travel?
- tabtab 4y agoThis is what dealing with #@$!&% CSS feels like. Give me back WYSIWYG grids with optional "stretch zones", they can do 90% the same thing with 2% the headaches.
- TheRealPomax 4y agoYou got it fam. https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/complete-guide-grid/ https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/complete-guide-grid/
- tabtab 4y agoIts integration with other HTML widgets is shaky.
- TheRealPomax 4y agoHTML doesn't have "widgets" though, so whatever you're thinking of, that's not HTML and CSS, that's "some framework that decided to run its own course".
- nl 4y agoIs this the first non-meta[1] mention of Mastodon in the NYT? [1] By this I mean a mention that isn't in the context of Mastodon as "a decentralized alternative to Twitter" or similar. Instead I'm referring to something that actually happened on Mastodon.