a homeschooling blog about Simon, a young mathematician and programmer, and his little sister Neva. Visit https://simontiger.com
I was looking up the lyrics of The Twelve Days of Christmas song (you know, the one that goes “On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to … Continue reading The Twelve Days of Christmas: How many Presents in Total?
I sampled 9 points on this curve. The x coordinates have constant increments (equally spaced horizontal coordinates). I then measured the y coordinates — that’s what the numbers at the … Continue reading A quick experiment to prove that a catenary is not a parabola
Last night, using simple logic, Simon proved to me why a two-candidate plurality voting system is better than many others. There’s a theorem called Arrow’s Theorem which says that any … Continue reading Simon contemplating various voting systems
Simon took a piece of paper and drew P vs. NP and other complexity classes. P vs. NP is probably the most famous millennium problem, one of the seven most … Continue reading Simon’s sketch book, P vs. NP and Fallacy vs. Paradox
Tomorrow we are celebrating Sinterklaas, or St.Nicolas’ birthday. It’s the climax of the traditional Dutch gift-giving season embracing the last two weeks of November and the first week of December. … Continue reading St.Nicolas Obsessions
One more project inspired by Sebastian Lague: a Bézier Editor. Simon used Sebastian Lague’s algorithms to recreate the editor in p5.JS. Editor: https://editor.p5js.org/simontiger/present/r4gW2mgIo Code: https://editor.p5js.org/simontiger/sketches/r4gW2mgIo I added the export button! … Continue reading Simon’s Bézier Editor in p5.js
Simon has been greatly inspired by Sebastian Lague’s new video on how computers work, it seems to have sparked a whole new wave of enthusiasm about logic gates and logic … Continue reading Logic Gates. Simon has programmed his own Digital Logic Simulator.
In October, Simon’s videos were featured on the Global Math Project website! The bulk are his latest three videos with detailed proofs of pile-splitting magic: In this video, I will … Continue reading Simon’s videos are featured on the Global Math Project website!
Simon enjoyed the informal interaction during the live session, even though he had been a little critical about the course. He always tunes in better once it gets less formal. … Continue reading A Beautiful Universe by Professor Cumrun Vafa World Science Scholars Live Session
I always have my birthdays on a Saturday, a little girl told us at a playground. We laughed at first. But then we asked ourselves, why are we celebrating how … Continue reading How many weeks old are you?
Here come a few simple but beautiful math games that don’t take much time or preparation. Simon has learned about these from the following great resources, worth checking out: Math … Continue reading More Math games on a sheet of paper or on the street, using two pieces of chalk
Yes, this one is about what Simon learned from James Tanton again. Simon basically spent two months living on Tanton’s websites. He even gave me two colorful lectures on matrix … Continue reading James Tanton’s Matrix Math
Geeks out of the box 