mathematics
Math fonts for (La)TeX
How could I have overlooked this Survey of Free Math Fonts for TeX and LaTeX! An excellent read, it shows the author has himself been involved in font design. As I mentioned in my entry on XeTeX, it is great to have many fonts for text (and XeTeX really takes a leap forward in this [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Natural coordinates
Here is an interesting application of Voronoi tesselations / Delaunay triangulations (see previous post The alpha shapes for another one.) Suppose you have a set of points carrying some information, let’s call them particles; the simplest case is just a scalar number representing some field whose value is only known for the particles. Then, [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )The alpha shapes
Typical problem in computational geometry: given a set of points, what is its shape? This may often be intuitive for a human being, but try to define this concept mathematically, then implement it numerically.
One of the proposals is called the “α shape”, and is closely related to the Delaunay triangulation. More details below.
See also [...]
The CGAL project
I have been following and using this project for some years now, on and off. In my opinion, a very remarkable cooperative effort of several research centers, coordinated at INRIA Sophia Antipolis. They provide very robust implementations of algorithms on computational geometry: Delaunay triangulations, Voronoi diagrams ski sums, meshes, alpha shapes, [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Insane mathematical databases
A brief post, on two notable mathematical databases I have recently come across:
On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, maintained by N. J. A. Sloane (for that “next term” in a series that puzzles you.
Encyclopedia of Triangle Centers by Clark Kimberling.
The amount of work the maintenance of these pages must demand (not to talk about the [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Computer math systems
A brief survey of the ones I have tried, with the student version price (as of mid 2008).
Computer algebra systems (see wikipedia comparison)
derive. Very simple, very easy. Unfortunately, it seems discontinued.
Mathematica. Incredibly powerful. But: crazy syntax, annoying graphic interface (it used to be impossible to rotate 3D objects, I don’t know if this has been [...]
