[HN Gopher] Desmos Animated Graphing Calculator
___________________________________________________________________
Desmos Animated Graphing Calculator
Author : sonicrocketman
Score : 136 points
Date : 2025-01-24 19:14 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.desmos.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.desmos.com)
| sonicrocketman wrote:
| I posted on Mastodon today about how helpful tools like this are
| for building mathematical intuition. Animations are no
| substitute, but they can also do what lecture never could.
|
| Mastodon post:
| https://mastodon.social/@sonicrocketman/113884920858897541
| WillAdams wrote:
| A wonderful example of this is:
|
| The Continuity of Splines
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvPPXbo87ds
|
| and
|
| The Beauty of Bezier Curves
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVwxzDHniEw
|
| by Freya Holmer https://www.youtube.com/@acegikmo
|
| While not animated, I find:
|
| _Euclid's Elements_ (Joyce's Java Version) very helpful
| https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.htm...
|
| Since my current project has pretty much devolved to putting a
| UI on various trigonometric functions and allowing the user to
| program them, I'd be very glad of other resources in this space
| (currently working through Hilbert's _Geometry and the
| Imagination_ and the book which matches
| https://projectivegeometricalgebra.org/ and just finished the
| _Make:Geometry/Trigonometry/Calculus_ series, and have had
| recommended Curves and Surfaces for CAGD: A Practical Guide by
| Gerald Farin)
| PhunkyPhil wrote:
| Freya Holmer is great.
|
| To add on: Grant Sanderson's 3Blue1Brown youtube channel
| might be the best conceptual math presentation in history,
| the animations are incredible.
| brudgers wrote:
| Some past comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37859085
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _Desmos 3D graphing calculator_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37859085 - Oct 2023 (83
| comments)
|
| _How Desmos uses Pratt Parsers (2018)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36245786 - June 2023 (19
| comments)
|
| _More Intuitive Calculator Arithmetic (2018)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21330341 - Oct 2019 (21
| comments)
|
| _Visual Demonstration of Approximating Arbitrary Functions
| with Sigmoids_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19711416
| - April 2019 (1 comment)
|
| _How Desmos uses Pratt Parsers_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18903550 - Jan 2019 (6
| comments)
|
| _Reign of the $100 graphing calculator is ending_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14298375 - May 2017 (72
| comments)
|
| _Desmos Graphing Calculator - HTML5 with LaTeX editor_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11369540 - March 2016 (29
| comments)
| belter wrote:
| https://www.desmos.com/art
|
| https://www.desmos.com/geometry/5shw8dydms
| vertnerd wrote:
| I used Desmos quite a bit as an instructional tool for high
| school math. They are funded through relationships with several
| companies, but most notably the standardized testing industry,
| which uses it with their online tests.
|
| Over ten years before Desmos launched, there began an open source
| project called Geogebra (https://www.geogebra.org/). Geogebra
| remains open source to this day and offers a similar suite of
| applications and calculators, both online and in app form.
|
| Over the years I have also used Geogebra as an instructional tool
| in both my math and physics classrooms, producing dozens of apps,
| simulators, and gizmos: https://www.geogebra.org/u/mrdathhs
|
| Geogebra excels at creating mathematical simulations. One of my
| favorites was this real-time satellite orbit calculator:
| https://www.geogebra.org/m/UEynuRnG
| luma wrote:
| I really wish I could get a dedicated handheld graphing
| calculator that hasn't had most of the functionality removed due
| to standardized testing. We live in an age of miracles but having
| a decent solver on a dedicated device is apparently commercially
| impossible because it couldn't be sold to students.
|
| I'm just a dude in my shop that occasionally would like to
| integrate a thing or two without getting coolant on my phone.
| seanhunter wrote:
| HP Prime G2 can certainly graph things, evaluate integrals,
| solve systems of equations etc not sure how hard you're looking
| because all the manufacturers have models like that. They have
| an exam mode which nerfs the calculator for tests.
| zokier wrote:
| There is DM42 hardware[1] and the DB48X/C47 firmwares for it. I
| feel that they are very much pushing the boundary on what makes
| sense on a formfactor like that.
|
| For something more powerful, you'd probably want something more
| in the "cyberdeck" direction, with some 3d printing and cheap
| ARM linux boards it's relatively easy to build portable
| distraction-free compute device.
|
| I adore this Micro Journal device[2]. Although it's intended
| for writing, it's not too difficult to imagine it running some
| suitable calculator software. The keyboard could be easily
| adapted to HP Voyager (15c etc) style layout.
|
| [1] https://www.swissmicros.com/product/model-dm42n
|
| [2] https://liliputing.com/micro-journal-rev-2-revamp-is-a-
| compa...
| RandomDistort wrote:
| Have you looked at some of the alternative firmwares for older
| Numworks models?
| zamadatix wrote:
| TI has CAS enabled variants of their calculators.
| willismichael wrote:
| I'm learning about digital signal processing and I use Desmos all
| the time as a scratchpad to plot the response of functions.
| halosghost wrote:
| For a similar project in a similar space (but with both a free
| android emulator, and the option for a dedicated hardware
| device), see [0]. I actually use it as my preferred calculator on
| my phone.
|
| All the best,
|
| [0] https://www.numworks.com/
| calebm wrote:
| Awesome. I love desmos. I just used it yesterday for a Wave
| mathematics class I taught for a homeschool group. I also wrote a
| math graphing program that helps make math beautiful called
| [Truthy Graph](https://truthygraph.github.io/). It came from a
| thought: most graphing programs only graph were both sides of the
| equation are exactly equal, but what would it look like to see
| also where they are nearly equal (in other words, the error
| gradient)?
| jpatel3 wrote:
| We are in kind of similar category but broader data literacy
| space and making data analysis more accessible and interactive.
| give it a try at https://tuvalabs.com
|
| you can plot functions on top of your visualizations, or take
| samples etc.
| rated wrote:
| I'm not much of a math aficionado, but I tip my hat to the
| creator of Desmos. Has been around and free for quite awhile now.
| varun_ch wrote:
| High school students taking the digital SAT get near-full access
| to Desmos throughout the math portion of the test (it's a
| modified version, but you get access to practically everything).
| It's very powerful, and if you can use it effectively, you can
| brute force hard questions in seconds. Graphing calculators have
| been available during the SAT in the past, but Desmos is
| something else... I wonder how it effects score
| distributions/question difficulty.
| varun_ch wrote:
| and on the topic of calculators in high school maths, the
| NumWorks calculator is so far ahead of the TI-84 despite being
| allowed on the same tests. It honestly feels like an advantage
| over my peers... it can literally do more, and faster. It was a
| big shock when I realized handheld calculators don't have to
| suck. Highly recommend.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-01-28 23:01 UTC)