Geeks out of the Box

This is a blog about Simon, a young mathematician and programmer, and his little sister Neva. We write this blog together, share their projects and thoughts on their journey towards self-dicovery. They’re growing up in a supportive non-coercive learning environment. We deeply believe in interest-based, self-paced education and have had to move countries to make this possible as a family. Visit Simon’s website at https://simontiger.com/ We are a family from Amsterdam who moved to Antwerp because homeschooling is illegal in The Netherlands. This blog started as https://antwerpenhomeschooling.wordpress.com in March 2016. Over the years, most of our entries have gravitated towards exploring together with Simon as he has developed an insatiable passion for programming, math and science. His sister Neva is treading on his heals. We changed or name to Geeks of the Box in May 2021.

By Geeks out of the Box September 21, 2020

Back to Integral Calculus

Simon’s back to the Integral Calculus course on Brilliant.org, picking up where he left off in July: trigonometric integrals. His private teacher says that in a Belgian high school, this … Continue reading Back to Integral Calculus

By Geeks out of the Box September 21, 2020October 2, 2020

The Perfect Sorting Algorithm

Simon showed us this guessing game where we had to guess the correct sequence of cards with numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 while the cards are all flipped upside down. … Continue reading The Perfect Sorting Algorithm

By Geeks out of the Box September 13, 2020

A Color Palette Generator in p5.JS

One more project from back in July. Inspired by one of his favorite resources Coolors.co, Simon created a beautiful color palette generator in p5.JS that builds off of a theme … Continue reading A Color Palette Generator in p5.JS

By Geeks out of the Box September 12, 2020September 12, 2020

Smoothing

Something else I forgot to post from back in July: Simon explaining linear smoothing and exponential smoothing. You can play with Simon’s smoothing sketch at https://editor.p5js.org/simontiger/sketches/ABdeWZVvs The white circle is … Continue reading Smoothing

By Geeks out of the Box September 9, 2020September 9, 2020

Why does everyone get tides wrong!?

We were having a beautiful evening back home in Antwerp, at the harbor. At one point Simon started jotting some calculations on the reverse side of the menu sheet (he … Continue reading Why does everyone get tides wrong!?

By Geeks out of the Box September 9, 2020

Some thoughts on the dimensions of polyhedra and polygons: How to make a 3D polygon with no area

A polyhedron is just a bunch of faces connected by edges. All the vertices are closed, so there’re no open bits. So there’s no rule that a polyhedron has to … Continue reading Some thoughts on the dimensions of polyhedra and polygons: How to make a 3D polygon with no area

By Geeks out of the Box September 9, 2020

How efficient is a base?

I defined the efficiency function in JS, I turned the crank and I got this table. So what this is is the efficiency in bases 2 through 8 for the … Continue reading How efficient is a base?

By Geeks out of the Box September 9, 2020September 9, 2020

“Triangular” Roots

Simon trying to work out what number you have to triangulate to get a given number, a “triangular root”. Just like a square root is basically how many dots there … Continue reading “Triangular” Roots

By Geeks out of the Box September 9, 2020September 9, 2020

ProLang: Simon’s first jam submission

Amidst all the traveling in August, Simon was working on his first serious coding competition submission. Together with a friend from Australia, he was building a new programming language called … Continue reading ProLang: Simon’s first jam submission

By Geeks out of the Box September 8, 2020

#MegaFavNumbers

Simon has made it into the #MegaFavNumbers playlist, organized by Cambridge’s James Grime for mathematicians on YouTube. Nearly 250 mathematicians (including StandUpMaths and 3Blue1Brown) have pitched in with videos about … Continue reading #MegaFavNumbers

By Geeks out of the Box September 8, 2020

Simon’s 11 revolutions

Et voilà, while in France, Simon started on his 12th round on the Earth carousel, another revolution where he is not just a passenger but a revolutionary explorer. As many … Continue reading Simon’s 11 revolutions

By Geeks out of the Box September 8, 2020

Math at the beach

We also visited another old favorite, the beach in Noordwijk. By the way, that’s where ESA is located, toon (they’ve got an awesome space museum we used to frequent when … Continue reading Math at the beach