I must confess I hardly ever doubted that if there exists a **Sierpinski Triangle page to end most Sierpinski Triangle pages** it would be written with help of Mathematica. These 10 quoted words is how Antonio Marquez-Raygoza titled his recent blog article. That did sound intriguing and I must assure you, in my opinion, it lives up completely to the title. Knowing Antonio as an author of two exquisite Demonstrations and as a skillful Mathematica programmer with a fine taste for visual design and elegance, I put everything aside and started reading. And was it a feast for my eyes! Some of you may know me as a person who enjoys coding visually appealing graphics. So imagine my joy in encountering something like this beautiful image and discovering it was produced with just a few lines of code (like so many things in Mathematica):
draw[v_, df_, n_] := Module[{ring}, ring[c_, r_, depth_] := Module[{ps}, ps = c + r {Cos[#], Sin[#]} & /@ (2. Pi Range[v]/v);
If[depth == 0, Polygon[ps], ring[(c + #)/2, df[0, r], depth - 1] & /@ ps]];
Graphics[{EdgeForm[White], Opacity[.4], RGBColor[.4, 1, 1], ring[0., 1., n]}]];
Show[(*repeatedly draw to cover more possibilities*) draw[4, (#1 + #2)/RandomChoice[Prime[Range[4]]] &,
RandomChoice[{.1, 1.5} -> {2, 3}]] & /@ Range[20], Background -> Black, ImageSize -> 600]
The article produced a massive viral hurricane of event on Internet. Let me share a few bits I picked up in the aftermath.This post mad quite a boom on Reddit getting front-paged on several sub-Reddits:
- Reddit Programming: 1154 upvotes 149 comments
- Reddit Math: 387 upvotes 35 comments
- Reggit Biology: 60 upvotes 15 comments
- Reddit Todayilearned: 50 upvotes 9 comments
- Reddit Fractals: 20 upvotes 2 comments
It was also posted on a few other Reddits. The article also scored 327 points and 55 comments on Hacker News a.k.a. Ycombinator.
There was of course an ocean of tweets, Facebook posts, and other social media sharing. I was very happy to see such famous Twitter feeds as Topology Fact sharing the link to the article:
This is an impact report of only tweets containing exact title of the article, of course they were many more tweets with different content:
And I must acknowledge the jazzy frisky humor of the piece not once it made me smile in amazement or simply LOL. For example a quote:
Note the cow cannot be spherical or it will roll off.
was also posted on Reddit in comments and earned more than 100 voteups! But it is not just funny - if you are not a physicist you probably will miss that this is most probably a reference to the spherical cow joke. I do not want to give you any spoilers but the poetic cow part with phrases like
I think this is the first time I’m jealous of a cow.
is actually about built in Mathematica cow that can be accessed simply as
ExampleData[{"Geometry3D", "Cow"}]
and with some further brilliant codding you will get this and agree eventually that a spherical cow would indeed roll off:
Sometimes on a book cover one may find quotes from critics acclaiming the book. I think what critics to a book, Reddit and Hacker News are to a blog. This is why I would like to post here just a few URL-linked comments from Reddit and Hacker News discussions of the post as my small token of appreciation for the fascinating reading.
The sheer brilliance of the author had me reeling. I wish more of the posts here were like this
I understand none of this, but it’s beautiful and inspiring.
Hell, that’s just a built-in cow Mathematica has.
The code is all Mathematica. It’s an amazing program.
“Holy mother, this person is cool and this person’s website is cool, too”
“I’ll also note that Mathematica looks quite awesome indeed.”
I have found someone whose irrational love for Mathematica puts me to shame.
Below I show a few images from that blog as a teaser. For complete visually unforgettable and code-enlightening experience please read the original blog post.
