Gliese 581g has some existential issues
Monthly Archives: July 2014
Sparkle, Sparkle, Little Wand
Happy aphelion to all.
For that subset of you also celebrating Independence day with fireworks (be safe): The Awesome Physics in a Simple Sparkler
(I do have a nit with this: At the end Rhett claims that a gas won’t emit blackbody radiation, but that big ol’ ball o’ gas we orbit around emits a pretty good blackbody spectrum. Get enough atoms together, and you’ll get a blackbody spectrum)
A Messy Analysis
I arrived at a conclusion that I wasn’t really expecting or prepared for: Lionel Messi is impossible.
It’s not possible to shoot more efficiently from outside the penalty area than many players shoot inside it. It’s not possible to lead the world in weak-kick goals and long-range goals. It’s not possible to score on unassisted plays as well as the best players in the world score on assisted ones. It’s not possible to lead the world’s forwards both in taking on defenders and in dishing the ball to others. And it’s certainly not possible to do most of these things by insanely wide margins.
But Messi does all of this and more.
Welcome to Visualize
Algorithms are a fascinating use case for visualization. To visualize an algorithm, we don’t merely fit data to a chart; there is no primary dataset. Instead there are logical rules that describe behavior. This may be why algorithm visualizations are so unusual, as designers experiment with novel forms to better communicate. This is reason enough to study them.
But algorithms are also a reminder that visualization is more than a tool for finding patterns in data. Visualization leverages the human visual system to augment human intellect: we can use it to better understand these important abstract processes, and perhaps other things, too.
The transformation of a maze into a decision tree near the end is awesome.
Fun With Index Matching