How does your computer see you?

Well how do you look when you see a new math problem?  Facial recognition software uses a set of measurements (distance between eyes, width of nose, etc.) to create a numerical “faceprint” for a particular image, which can then be compared with a database. 

Mood Battle is an experiment to detect emotions by comparing measurements from a face.  If you have a webcam, try out some different emotions on it.  But if it mistakes your angry face for a happy one, remember: it’s only looking at numbers.

Fractal pancakes

What I cooked up for breakfast this morning:

Dragon curve, Apollonian gasket, Sierpinski sieve, Mandelbrot set, Pythagorean tree,
Koch snowflake, Star fractal, Hilbert curve, Lorenz attractor

Get rich with calculus

While demand and pay for STEM careers continues to rise, maybe your math students are feeling more like Alex here:


The website www.enotes.com is one way to make a few bucks answering math questions for students at various levels (though the upper math questions are most frequently asked, and least frequently answered).  The math notation editor is pretty slick and intuitive.  Answers pay $2 or $4, so you’re not going to get rich quick, but I made a fat $600 during the month I had nothing better to do.

Calculus cookies

Found these in Portland – they really do help you find dy/dx.  But not f’, though… for that you need Fig Newtons.  Sigh.