Models, Theses and the Situation

Recent days have brought more math and CS-related awesomeness. Max has been investigating the symmetries of the five regular polyhedra and in order to better do this he built models of the polyhedra in question. He used bristol board and glue (which was sometimes replaced by tape) and the resulting models were really cool-looking. I especially liked the icosahedron, partly because of its shape and partly because it was a soothing shade of dark green. The models and the ensuing discussion of symmetries also allowed me to gain new vocabulary words:

Vertex: Point. Or corner. Regular polyhedra have vertices that are all the same (in that the faces are assembled identically around each one).

I can't actually remember my other new polyhedron/symmetry-related words but I may post about them again later if they come back to me. They pertained to the symmetries and whether or not the way the polyhedron looks changes, I think.

In other news, Antoine (who used to be doing a minor in CS but has since changed his mind) told me (well, technically it was an "us" but I am writing this in the first person singular) about the MIT CS paper generator (http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/) yesterday. It's pretty cool. You put in the names of up to five authors and it will come up with a fake computer science-related paper these people have supposedly authored, complete with citations and everything. The papers in question apparently do not make all that much sense but they look pretty good to me. As is mentioned on the SCIgen homepage, they are trying to "maximize amusement, rather than coherence".

I would still like to post a picture of my painted and Matlab-postered room as well as of Max's awesomely awesome models but this will have to wait for three or so weeks because I will be at home/my parents' house for that amount of time. This also means that I will be away from my current sources of blog fodder, which is slightly problematic. Never fear, however, as my new location comes complete with two brothers, one of whom (though still in high school) is better versed in math than me. So though the level of math will be lower I will still be learning, hopefully things of the blog-worthy persuasion. Also, I am considering turning toward more math culture-type pursuits.