Touch Your Inner Geek

April 9, 2011 by Lemur King

Passed on by alert reader mrmacs, a handy guide to beautiful dance moves. I’m fond of x²+y², myself.http://www.neatorama.com/2011/04/07/mathematical-dance-moves/

Posted in Geek | Tagged dance moves, geek, math | 25 Comments

25 Responses

on April 9, 2011 at 8:31 pm | Reply ooGcM taobmaetS

I liked the parabolic arms of X^2, myself!

But I grant the X^2 + Y^2 is lovely.

I guess a graphic of Sin(x) / x (the ol’ Finger Function!) would be asking too much.

Outstanding catch by mrmacs, btw! I would have been sooooo stealing this!
- on April 9, 2011 at 10:19 pm | Reply Lemur King
  
  From the point of view of the observer, I just realized that *technically* the first one is -Sin(x) or Sin(pi+x), if you prefer.
  
  Or (e^-ix – e^ix)/2i
  
  Whatever. Euler is my hero but the man was also insane.
  
  Just occurred to me AGAIN that my assumption is that the origin lies on the stick figure’s breastbone, in which cotangent is off which doesn’t jibe with the tangent… I already had a neck/headache and thinking hard only added to that. My bad.
  - on April 9, 2011 at 10:44 pm | Reply mrmacs
    
    It’s the weekend, you shouldn’t be thinking at all. Turn off the brain for a few days.
    
    Easier said than done, though.
    - on April 10, 2011 at 12:57 am | Reply Lemur King
      
      An engineer’s mind never stops. Show me an engineer who can turn it off at 5pm and I’ll show you a heavy drinker (And even then… iffy… I’ve done many many designs on a beer-soaked napkin.)
      - on April 10, 2011 at 5:32 am | Reply mrmacs
        
        Yeah, you’re right, it’s hard to find the OFF detent on the ON/OFF switch. Many a time Wife has done the “hand wave in front of face” in an attempt to return me to reality while out having dinner.
  - on April 10, 2011 at 3:26 am | Reply ooGcM taobmaetS
    
    I, too, noticed that the phasing of the sinusoidals seemed to be off if one assumed the stick-figure body was the Y-axis.
    
    I then thought, “Fuck the artist!” and ignored it.
    
    It was when I tried forming my arms into a non-euclidean spiral that I heard in the distance:
    
    Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn
    
    ….and I decided I’d best leave things as they were.
    - on April 10, 2011 at 9:48 am | Reply Lemur King
      
      A Mandelbrot in 3-D representation will take you to the edge of the abyss.
      
      A hypercube momentarily relieved me of neck pain but then it came back worse.
      
      I haven’t had the cojones to try a Bessel function yet.
      
      I will stay away from your spirals because I’m already half mad.
      - on April 10, 2011 at 10:12 am | Reply mrmacs
        
        Mandelbrot in 3-D sounds fascinating, though I don’t do the maths. Hypercube I’ve seen and is fascinating, though has anyone animated anything other than a cube into 4-D?
        
        Wow, you really don’t stop thinking.
        
        Oh, and have the laser-heads seen this?:
        http://scienceblog.com/44232/test-moves-navy-a-step-closer-to-lasers-for-ship-self-defense/
        
        on April 10, 2011 at 12:50 pm | Reply Lemur King
        
        MLD’s are really intriguing but they don’t say a lot about what it is. It’s IR, that’s for sure. As long as it is a long enough wavelength that you can’t blind someone, I’m game.
        
        I’ve seen various people say that the lasers could cut through 20 feet of steel in a second. I’m going to nit-pick and quibble over that one. The vaporized/ablated metal is going to have to go somewhere. At some point there is enough obscuration that you are self-defeating – there’s a limit to how deep you can go in a certain amount of time. Now, if they want to raster-scan that and say “20 linear feet of steel of X thickness per second”…
        
        Here’s a good link:
        
        http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.html
        
        If you look at this one from a distance first, it sorta looks like a wolf lifting it’s head and howling.
        
        http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/3dmanden.jpg
        
        Also, google ChaosPro.
on April 9, 2011 at 9:44 pm | Reply Mitchell

Nice! Motorcycle post is up BTW.
on April 9, 2011 at 9:49 pm | Reply mrmacs

Unfortunately, most of these moves are impractical unless you have tentacles instead of fixed joints. Sigh. What to give for tentacles.

Speaking of tentacles, if I put another word with that, I’ll bet we could get some REAL traffic to this site… Maybe better not, though.

Glad to contribute where I can.

Now, to graph the Macarena…
- on April 10, 2011 at 12:58 am | Reply Lemur King
  
  What word might that be?
  - on April 10, 2011 at 5:29 am | Reply mrmacs
    
    Since you asked: PORN!
    
    Nothing of my interest, mind you. There’s some weird people out there, though, that go looking from the stuff. My sister and BiL who live in Japan say there’s stores selling tons of magazines of the stuff. Well, maybe not selling, but on display anyway.
    
    Much harder-core over there.
    - on April 10, 2011 at 9:38 am | Reply Lemur King
      
      tentacle porn?
      
      I mean, I get that the word “porn” gets many hits, but what word combined with “tentacles” get many hits?
      
      But tentacle porn?
      - on April 10, 2011 at 10:07 am | Reply mrmacs
        
        Yup, lowly Tentacle Porn. Sister threatened to send some from Japan, but “No Thanks”. Falls into their group of comics called Hentai. An extension of their Anime culture, but toward the darker side.
        
        Doesn’t do a thing for me and I don’t recommend it. Yecch. There’s some strange people out there.
        
        on April 10, 2011 at 10:10 am | Reply Lemur King
        
        I like to think I’ve seen a most of the stranger things out there – a lot of which I will never mention on this blog – but every now and then I’m surprised.
on April 10, 2011 at 8:25 am | Reply veeshir

That’s cool, almost makes me wish I wasn’t boycotting this blog.

I dance in the “x/0″ style.

It just shouldn’t be done.
on April 10, 2011 at 12:49 pm | Reply LC Aggie Sith

I would love to see the equivalent to the Lambada.

Veeshir, why the boycotting??

And no, LK…do not go looking for tentacle pr0n. It has a very long history in Japan. And thankfully, only Japan.
- on April 10, 2011 at 2:24 pm | Reply Veeshir
  
  It’s a guy thing.
- on April 10, 2011 at 2:24 pm | Reply Lemur King
  
  Well, telling me to not go looking for it made it impossible to not go looking for it.
  
  Don’t think about the purple elephant.
  
  Can’t not think about the odd-hued pachyderm, can you?
  
  And by the way… ewwww. You sick preverts!
  
  (that was a nod to Stephen King, the “prevert” thing)
  - on April 10, 2011 at 4:08 pm | Reply mrmacs
    
    What has been seen, cannot be un-seen. Even for preverts.
    
    Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
    
    One dose of eye-bleach, coming right up!
    - on April 10, 2011 at 4:14 pm | Reply Lemur King
      
      I know, I know…
      
      Remember the first time I was exposed to the notion of “shemale”.
      
      And there’s a few things I’ve never seen, have heard of, and will never utter. Do they make brain-bleach?
      - on April 10, 2011 at 4:26 pm | Reply ooGcM taobmaetS
        
        Brain bleach?
        
        Yes.
        
        Alcohol and recreational drugs.
        
        Scientology?
        
        Liberalism?
        
        I recommend just living with the mental stains. Over time they develop character.
        
        on April 10, 2011 at 6:55 pm | Reply mrmacs
        
        I’ve not found an effective brain-bleach short of electro-convulsive therapy.
        
        Drugs and ETOH just smear and mask the stain for me. I can’t do the drugs and keep my clearance.
        
        There’s lots more scary stuff out there. Driving an ambulance as a volunteer in my little community has shown me some of the darker side of life, and reading the writings of online EMS pro’s has opened my eyes even more.
        
        Check out neptunuslex for his story of the dark side of drugs. Just posted this evening.
        
        on April 10, 2011 at 7:41 pm | Reply Lemur King
        
        Mental-wise I’ve got more stains than a teenage boy’s sock.
        
        I like to think I’ve got some kind of character oozing out of my pores.
        
        Also seen more of the effects of drugs than I like.