Poromenos’ hello world curve

Technology

helloworldgraph_20080402.jpg

Take a peek at this curve. If you take the rounded y value for every integer x from 0 through 11, you’ll have yourself the ascii values for the string “Hello world!”.

Well, I have a computer architecture exam in six hours and can’t be bothered, so I figured I would realize a lifelong dream of mine, and make a program that prints “Hello world!” using curve fitting techniques. Enlisting the help of a good friend with numerous mathematical papers under his belt (ostensibly because he could not afford a tighter belt), MATLAB and a longing for procrastination, we embarked on this perilous journey. After many, many hours of fitting and discarding data, I can finally present to you my masterpiece.

It’s 12 characters summed from 10 sines and cosines:

96.75 - 21.98*cos(x*1.118) + 13.29*sin(x*1.118) - 8.387*cos(2*x*1.118) + 17.94*sin(2*x*1.118) + 1.265*cos(3*x*1.118) + 16.58*sin(3*x*1.118) + 3.988*cos(4*x*1.118) + 8.463*sin(4*x*1.118) + 0.3583*cos(5*x*1.118) + 5.878*sin(5*x*1.118)

Poromenos’ blog has the full Python script which evaluates and renders the famous words. Hands down, this is the best math to happen to me all day.

Printing “Hello world!” using curve fitting techniques

0 thoughts on “Poromenos’ hello world curve

  1. F.O. Loom says:

    Odd. Just returned on flight from NYC. We found that we both ‘suffered’ the loss of underwear (dirty) from both our checked luggage. I suggest some psych profiles of the luggage handlers or a search of their sock drawers.

  2. Poromenos’ hello world curve Becky Stern says:

    Maybe that would have helped me on the way back from Maker Faire! We should sell a “prop luggage gun” kit in the store.

  3. Jason Striegel says:

    Becky, that’s a great idea. It could just shot out a little flag that said “MAKE:secure”, all the while appearing real enough that it had to be declared.

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