There are a great many such parametric formulae, such as hypergeometric sequences and their sums. You can get very interesting results by plotting the roots of a polynomial as the coefficients vary, without ever letting two roots coincide. It is possible to generate all knots and links in this way, by letting the graph wrap around.
Given * A parameter t in the range [0,1] * A polynomial P = Σaᵢxⁱ for i in the range from 0 to n * Continuous but not necessarily differentiable complex-valued functions aᵢ(t), with aᵢ(0) = aᵢ(1) for which P has no repeated roots at any value of t, we can take the graphs of the n complex roots of P for each t, graph them in three dimensions, and then topologically wrap the whole thing around into a donut, joining t = 0 and t = 1, where the roots are the same, but may be permuted. The following diagram must be viewed in a monospace font in order to make sense. _______ _____ \/ _______/\_____ On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 17:11, Gregor Lingl <gregor.li...@aon.at> wrote: > Hi all, > > recently I stumbled (once more) over a posting by our friend > Daniel Ajoy about the superformula (I think it was in a Logo-Forum): > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superformula > > On the other side Kirby wrote interesting suggestions > about using generators. > > Now, weekend, bad weather, some sparetime, I > assembled an implementation of a superformula-viewer > using pygame. It runs with Python 2.6 or higher, also > 3.x, of course > > You'll find it here for download: > > http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2016850/superformula.py > > or appended (which sometimes / for some of you) > doesn't work well depending on the browser or whatever. > > The script uses generators for generating the pointlists > of the graph of the superformula and also for generating > colors for the segments of the graph-area. > > Morover I've prepared a q&d slider class, which possibly > doesn't use the canonical way of processing events in > pygame but works fine for this application. > > Critical comments and feedback and also questions, of course, > are welcome. > > Perhaps someone is willing to amend the docstrings, > which suffer from my clumsy English and could well > be more clear. > > Amendments of the code, espercially ones, which make it > more readable and easier to understand, also. > > Useful for classroom use? Perhaps to difficult? > > Best regards, > Gregor > > > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig@python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > > -- Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig