Where’s the PK outlet???
06.03.2026 02:11
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Where’s the PK outlet???
Sure! I’ve given problems like this before and about half of them do something like this:
X=-3+-i
X+3=+-i
(X+3)^2=-1
x^2+6x+9=-1
X^2+6x+10=0
My students would “uncomplete” the square!
It uses the first guess to get a 3D "distance" away from the goal color. Then it goes through the list of colors and creates a list of colors that is that same distance away from the original guess. It picks one of those colors and then finds all colors that are d1 from color 1, and d2 from color 2.
Ok, so I threw the task at AI again and it now guesses the color in three guesses using the same idea as my original hack at it.
Code if interested: pastebin.com/ZrmfyhG2
Yeah, agreed. It’s fun to talk about though, especially in astronomy, where people still sometimes use arcseconds and etc to measure things.
Finally got an hour to play with Desmos and my cricut. To my eyes, what I was able to make is stunning! 😍 🤩 #mathart #mtbos
Image is a subsection of Van Goghs Starry Night. It’s the large whorl in the sky. Over the image is a vector field which points along the whorl. The vector field is -sin(x-y) for the i component and cos(x+y) for the j component. The vector field is handwritten. The image is black and white.
The vector field F=<x,2-x^2> is overlayed on the image of a fountain in a pond. The water sprays straight up and falls down into a circular region. The vectors point along the motion of the water.
Vector fields as art. In #MathsToday the students had to create a vector field and overlay it with a picture to create Vector Art.
Just a fun little extension at the end of a unit. #iTeachMath
This study by people from Anthropic itself should raise huge alarm bells about the use of AI in teaching how to code (and later on in coding itself, but esp. in the learning stage).
And remember: this is by the people who make Claude!
tl;dr: not that long, read it
www.anthropic.com/research/AI-...
A new study from Anthropic finds that gains in coding efficiency when relying on AI assistance did did not meet statistical significance; AI use noticeably degraded programmers’ understanding of what they were doing. Incredible.
Teaching law of sines/cosines and the fancy area of triangle formula (1/2 a b sinC) are fun. Get to bring in a ton of Geometry that they thought they were done with. Why is using law of sines to find an angle dangerous? etc. One of those weeks where their worlds are colliding.
41 guesses today using the one dimension at a time binary search today
BTW, this is a use case of AI for something that would have been a bit of a stretch for me, the trilateration math; and something that I could have written in an hour or two, the binary search code. Really satisfying.
Want to try it? Here is the Python solver and the CSV containing the 30k+ color names it uses to find "typeable" guesses.
Code: appdevtools.com/pastebin/KBC...
Colors: appdevtools.com/pastebin/0Qt... (put this in a colornames.csv file)
Now the script uses a Binary Search for each channel. It keeps Green and Blue steady while jumping through Red values (e.g., trying 125, then 190). If the score goes up, it narrows the search higher; if not, it goes lower. Once Red is "peaked," it moves to Green, then Blue. It worked today!
But the "math" of color similarity isn't always linear, so the spheres wouldn't align perfectly, and the solver would get stuck in "local minima" (loops of bad guesses).
So, I pivoted to Coordinate Descent, tuning one channel at a time.
Used AI to help code a Colordle (colordle.ryantanen.com) solver! Since color is a 3D space (RGB), my first idea was trilateration: treating each guess like a sphere where the similarity % is the radius. In theory, where the spheres intersect is the answer. (Imagine a 2D version with intersecting⭕'s)
Less noisy, but still noisy. This is a graph of (day of year born, % of people born on that day)
www.desmos.com/calculator/g...
Used AI to convert this table to 1 dimensional data so it could be graphed. x.com/Globalstats1...
Here's the desmos graph. Looks pretty random until November/December to me.
www.desmos.com/calculator/k...
Trying to teach the connections between the cosine and arccosine graphs. How's this for an idea? Give them a square sheet, fold at a diagonal. Draw the cosine graph on one side, flip the paper along the y=x line and then use ink bleed through to "see" arccosine (I'm sure it's been done already)
teaching like Ted Lasso is BACK! Talking to actual athletes on teaching/sports/Ted Lasso connections. Thanks so much to Jen and Morgan. www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SxK... #tltl @deltadc.bsky.social hasn't lost a step.
Spotify Wrapped highlights(?):
49 days of music played
Listening age: 74
Top percent Swiftie.
This Cyber Monday, I’m knocking 40% off my usual rate for helping students.
Maybe I should spam out an email to let them know of this amazing deal.
Yikes I wrote about education policy. pershmail.substack.com/p/i-dont-kno...
Look, if you wanted fast but wrong answers, I know a guy.
Calvin & Hobbes walking along a tree trunk laid across a river as a bridge.
40 years ago today the world was introduced to a small boy and his best friend. Happy birthday Calvin & Hobbes.
Same but whiteboard markers
Thanks!
tick tock, think you can make something similar?
