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ptrgags
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[44053933]
[2017-11-03 01:03:51 +0000 UTC]
(United States)
# Statistics
Favourites: 623; Deviations: 846; Watchers: 35
Watching: 48; Pageviews: 7866; Comments Made: 945; Friends: 48
# Interests
Favorite gaming platform: SteamTools of the Trade: Fountain Pens, GLSL shaders, DSLR camera, anything really
Other Interests: Programming, Math, Science
# About me
Programmer, Hobbyist Artist, Math/Science Enthusiast# Comments
Comments: 43
Thanks for the faves and watch Peter
I still have some messages to answer from you, they will answered soon I hope! I do not forget them, despite my notification center is really full
See you around
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You're welcome!
No worries, take your time!
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Thank you very much for all your attention to me! It is very important for me.
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You're quite welcome! When I see art on here, I like to provide feedback since I know how important and uncommon that can be on here.
It also means sometimes I'm super slow to get through my notification stack. Providing good feedback takes time. So a belayed thank you for all the favorites in the past!
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Thank you, you are very kind! Very few people here are open and welcoming, so I'm glad to see that you are paying attention to me!
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You're welcome 
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Have you ever tried mathematical construction problems?
It seems like you might enjoy problems where drawing and math come together.
The constructible numbers are interesting to look at too. :3
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Is that the type with compass and straightedge? I never really got into that. There was one app I tried but you had to pay to unlock the later puzzles :/
Do you know of any collection of such puzzles?
The main set of math puzzles I go to is Project Euler since they often require programming to calculate the results. It also shows me how much I still have to learn about mathematics XD.
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Yeah, those are the ones of which I was thinking. XD
I always had enough problems to work on that I never spent time looking for more.
If you want really good problems, the old Putnam problems are always incredibly hard but very clever and pretty.
That gives you an idea of what the top level undergraduates are capable of too.
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Cool! Though I always have so many programming projects and programming puzzles to work on it's always hard to decide what to do next.
There's thankfully so many programming puzzle websites out there. Besides Project Euler, there's CodeWars, Sphere Online Judge (SPOJ), Rosalind (bioinformatics-themed), and probably several others out there.
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Danke for the favourites, badge, and watch, really appreciate it!
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Really nice to actually talk to you today.
I was actually a computational mathematician before quitting to paint, so we might have more in common than just art. OUO
What sort of mathematical/programming work do you do?
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Same!
Ooh that sounds cool, what did you do as a computational mathematician? What topics in math did it involve? What software did you use? Perhaps Matlab, Mathematica, R, Python + data science libraries like Pandas, or something else?.
As for me, I'm a Computer Science student. I'm currently on a co-op so I'm working full-time as a software developer until April when I go back to class. I mainly program in Python with occasional frontend programming in JavaScript. However, I'm very flexible when it comes to programming languages; I enjoy learning about new languages and environments.
My personal programming projects focus a lot more on graphics/math/physics since those are what interest me. Here are some of my projects:
- ptrgags.github.io/holiday-shad… -- This is my latest project. I usually make some sort of eyecandy around the holidays. Make sure to check out the tutorials page
- ptrgags.github.io/ -- This is my main website. There are several cool projects listed there.
That said, ever since my friends introduced me to fountain pens last summer, I've found a newfound interest in traditional art. It gives me a nice break from all the technical projects I work on.
I'm also taking a math minor. Once I take 2 more classes (PDEs and Complex Analysis) this spring, I'll have completed the minor. I've focused a lot on calculus/differential equations, but there's so many other topics I'd like to learn about too. What's your background in mathematics?
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Your projects all look pretty cool.
PDEs are my main subject, and complex analysis is just amazing.
You have already taken real analysis then, so you are getting into high level material.
Python would be the next language I would learn if I went back.
You will probably keep running into artists if you stay in this field.
Math, computer science, art, and philosophy seem to go together everywhere I've been.
I got a BA in pure mathematics without almost no coding.
Then I did a PhD in "computational applied mathematics" with tons of coding.
My research was in algorithm development for numerical solutions to PDEs.
I focused on wave propagation models, and Helmholtz equation is my specialty.
I've spent some time working with a quantum mechanics group too.
I also taught introductory coding classes and calculus at my uni.
I tend to prototype all my codes in Matlab, and I write production level codes in Fortran.
All my algorithms focus on parallel computing, so I use MPI too.
Now I am in Los Alamos just painting, but everyone in the city is a scientist or mathematician.
That keeps me a little connected to the academic world. XD
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Thank you!
Yeah, ever since I learned about the Mandelbrot Set and Newton's Method fractals I've been curious to know more about complex numbers. This course should be a good introduction to them. I guess I'll see in a couple months.
What do you mean by "real analysis?" None of the courses I've taken had that name but maybe I've learned the same topics under a different name?
I definitely recommend Python, it's a very well-balanced language. The syntax is easy to read and there are some really cool third-party libraries out there.
Definitely, all those topics become intertwined the more one gets involved in them. I know plenty of friends and coworkers in the same field do art/music on the side.
That's interesting, what sorts of wave propagation did you research? And what did you do with quantum mechanics?
Someday I'd really like to understand the math behind quantum mechanics just because it's interesting. Linear Algebra and probability classes helped a ton, but there's still a few things I want to learn more like PDEs and how to solve second order differential equations. A better understanding of complex numbers would probably help too.
Oh wow, Fortran? I wasn't expecting that. What's Fortran like these days? I know it's changed a lot since the days where it only did imperative programming with non-recursive functions, but I've never actually seen a modern Fortran program.
Haha this sounds like the start of a short story or something. "Painter in a Sea of Scientists". I think that's cool though, you can do what you like without losing touch of the mathematics world.
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No one can escape the lure of studying fractals.
That is probably the most popular math out there.
I did spend a summer researching Apollonian circle packings which is a fun way to look at fractals more from a number theory point of view than an analysis view.
Real analysis would possibly be listed as any sort of advanced calculus after calc III.
It would be where you learn "delta-epsilon" proofs for limits, and you might do some measure theory there too.
My wave propagation research was most applicable to acoustic waves.
You can find all my papers if you search my name on Google scholar or however you search.
I worked with a group that does very non-conventional quantum mechanics work.
They were interested in defining properties of molecules only by examining properties of the electron charge density.
Can you see what a bond is just looking at the charge density given as a function of three spatial variables?
They were asking questions like that.
I think once you take PDEs, you'll begin to understand quantum much better.
That is the final piece you need if you have linear and probability figured out.
Personally, I never liked probability or statistics much.
Fortran is still a pain today.
The syntax has become less strict, but allocation of arrays and variable declaration tends to be a pain.
Object oriented programming is difficult too. XD
What university are you at?
No pressure if you want to keep that secret.
I just have lots of friends teaching in various math departments.
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Interesting. I've heard of Apollonian circle packings but it's not something I've looked into yet. I've mostly played around with fractals that are simple to draw by hand (sierpinski triangle & carpet), fractals that can be drawn via turtle graphics (e.g. the van Koch Snowflake), fractals in the complex plane which are easy to make with pixel shaders, and recently I started learning about iterated function system fractals using the program Apophysis. I like how there's still much more out there for me to learn about fractals, they're so cool.
Hm, looking through Drexel's catalog, it looks like there's both a Real Variables I and Complex Variables I as grad-level classes. I'll be taking the undergrad version of Complex Variables. I don't see a Real Variables in the undergrad section. Weird. I've seen only a couple δ-ε proofs back in high school calc class when we first learned limits. We didn't really go into detail about the proofs.
Now that I'm reminded of δ-ε proofs, I think I'd understand it a lot better now than I did in high school. After all the pixel shaders I wrote, |x - a| < δ makes a lot more sense to me as comparing a distance from a function to a threshold. Distance fields are super important when making shader art. The threshold often controls how blurry/sharp the curve is.
I found some of your papers via Google Scholar, though I don't have access to every one through Drexel. I'll have to read them a few times to understand what's going on, this is going past my current level of math knowlege.
That sounds neat, how successful were you at identifying types of bonds?
Probability isn't my favorite math topic, but I pay attention to it since I know how useful it is. Also, now I have a better understanding of dice rolls which is cool. I collect dice, so it's nice to know how to control probability distributions if I ever find a reason to use them.
That sounds painful. I hope you get to try languages that are easier to work with than that!
Are you talking about Object-oriented programming in Fortran or in general?
I go to Drexel University, know anyone there?
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I have seen impressive images from apophysis, but I have never looked at how the program works.
I never had much interest in the applications I worked on besides the actual math stripped of the real world, but I think they are pretty successful at identifying lots of molecular properties from just the electron charge density including bonds.
Yeah, object oriented programming is hard in Fortran. It seems quite nice in other languages. XD
I'm probably retired for good from coding now though. I'll leave that to you.
Don't bother trying to read my papers. They aren't very exciting.
There is much more interesting math to read in my opinion.
Is Drexel a nice school? I have never even been to Philly, and I don't know anyone there.
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Here's the paper that describes the math behind fractal flame editors like Apophysis: flam3.com/flame_draves.pdf . Essentially you are taking the unit square and repeatedly throwing it through affine transforms and non-linear functions from R^2 to R^2. At each iteration, Apo picks from a list of the transforms you define. So by picking the transforms and adjusting the probability distribution via many many weight parameters you get some neat fractals in the end.
Rendering is done via a monte-carlo simulation with millions to billions of iterations to make a crisp image. This is why each render can take hours without high-end hardware.
That's cool that the charge density encodes that much information!
Yeah, OOP is usually pretty simple in most languages these days. One feature I'm particularly happy about is support for automatic getters/setters and/or defining properties that look like variables but act like functions. This makes it so much cleaner compared to Java where you have to write get_whatever() and set_whatever() for every little thing.
It's definitely a cool school. It runs at a fast pace and has a weird calendar, but the key benefit is the co-op program. I'm taking the typical 5-year, 3-co-op schedule. This means I get a year and a half of work experience while I'm working on my undergraduate degree.
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Right on! I have always wanted to find the math behind those images, but I never went through the effort of finding the documentation. XD
Is there any support for parallel computing to speed up the rendering? Usually monte-carlo is trivially parallel.
Modern languages make everything simple which is awesome! Matlab is such an easy language to play around in.
The physical chemists have a theorem which says that you get the same information from the electron density of a molecule that you would get from knowing all the individual wave functions and spins. The density is easier to simulate, so they are figuring out how I suppose.
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Haha I only know about that my paper because my friend sent me a link to it the same day she showed me the basics of the program.
Yes, Apophysis supports running things across multiple processors. However, it still takes quite a while.
I haven't used Matlab much, but I do like how it makes matrix operations easy. However, since I'm a programmer, I could imagine the 1-indexing would get confusing.
Interesting. what "information" can be found this way? You said it is something about identifying bonds?
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Yeah, Matlab is obnoxious about indexing. XD
You get used to it. Matlab is cheap while you are a student, so now is the time if you want to try it.
Or, grab a copy of Octave which is the open source version of Matlab.
I think most everything we can know about a molecule can be found by modeling and interpreting the electron density, but I never cared much about the chemistry.
They had some applications going in enzyme design for pharmaceutical companies, and the funding was through the Navy for materials research.
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Yeah, it's just a different frame of mind to get into.
I need to figure out what happened to my Matlab license. I have a license from Drexel but after an update or something it didn't seem to remember it. But if I needed to do matrix math I usually go to Octave or NumPy anyway. I wish Octave had symbolic computation like Matlab does, but there's always SymPy for that. That's why I can't seem to get away from Python, it has everything you could ever think of.
That's interesting. I had a year in high school where I really liked chemistry. Then I found physics which I was much more interested in.
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Oh man, I try to avoid symbolic computation at all costs.
I think mathematica is the best at that though.
I thought I would eventually study physics or chem.
My mom, dad, and wife are all chemists.
I never ended up leaving math.
I never even took a single physics class. XD
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I find it useful when working with bigger equations. For example, when I was working on this project I used SymPy to make sure I had the correct equations for the double pendulum. I've derived it once by hand; it's very easy to make an error with a page full of similar symbols that differ only by a subscript or dot.
Oh wow, that's funny. At least you found your own favorite subject!
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Very cool, my students always had to make a similar double pendulum animation in an intro coding course.
When I took calc III, the prof let me use mathematica, so I did the entire course that way.
Later on I had to go back and actually learn calc III. XD
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Nice! Making animations/games are always a good way to start learning about programming.
Yeah, programming makes the calculations much easier. Understanding the calculations sold separately XD
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You're welcome! Thank you for the llama!
Wow your gallery is full of pretty fractals! In a couple of weeks when I have more time I plan to come back and give more detailed feedback on your stuff!
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That's amazing, feel free! Thank you so much
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Thanks a huge bunch for watching me! ^w^
Thanksception!
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You're welcome! Thank you too for the critique and the watch!
I do plan to respond to your critique soon, likely tomorrow. This week my schedule is unusually busy; I am visiting friends and family often due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S.
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Thanks for the favorite! Your support is much appreciated
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Hello!
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