JSXGraph allows you to plot mathematical functions on any browser, and on any operating system.
You can now plot your own graphs using this online graphing calculator:
Plot your own graphs using JSXGraph
You can input many different functions, including:
- Straight lines and parabolas
- Trigonometric functions and their inverses
- Exponential and log functions, including base 10
- Hyperbolic functions
This JSXGraph plotter has similar functionality to my SVG-based plotter, but works in more browsers and systems.
JSXGraph works on iPhone and Android, too!
Heres a screen shot:
Try it out and let me know if you have suggestions for improvement. The link again:
Plot your own graphs using JSXGraph
Tags: Jsxgraph, Online Graph
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Educators say South Carolina’s new budget adds money to classrooms and school buses and could ease problems in school schools around the state.
Public education spending accounts for more than a third of the $6 billion general fund spending plan that took effect Friday. And it survived all but one of Gov. Nikki Haley’s budget vetoes with Legislature overriding by overwhelming margins.
The budget adds $12.4 million for school buses, $20 million to deal with flaws in the statewide school funding formula and $56 million in additional per-student spending.
But legislators and Gov. Nikki Haley did scrap a SAT improvement program.
Scott Price of the South Carolina School Boards Association says that doesn’t seem to mesh with the thinking that SAT test scores are a measuring stick for the state.
Tags: Budget Adds, School
When I first saw the link to this article about tweeting and grammar, I thought it was talking about people using Twitter in a grammatically correct way. I thought this was both fantastic and statistically unlikely.
It turns out that the article is talking about a species of bird, the Bengal finch, that appears to recognise some kind of grammar within its bird songs. Bengal finches make a lot of noise when they hear unfamiliar bird songs, most probably related to maintaining their territory in the face of strange birds. Scientists familiarised a group of finches with a new song, which they then remixed by cutting it and putting it back together in four different ways.
The birds only reacted strongly to one of these four mixes, leading researchers to believe that this particular version had broken some cardinal rule of finch grammar. Birds raised in isolation didnt react to this breach of grammar, but they did after spending two weeks with normal birds.
Read more…
Today is Independence Day, a national holiday in the United States. Weve talked about the Fourth of July a few times (here and here and here). This day marks (indicates; remembers) the anniversary of the signing of our Declaration (Statement) of Independence from Great Britain back in 1776. For our listeners in the United States, enjoy your holiday!
P.S. Today also marks the 1000th episode of ESL Podcast (700 dialog episodes plus 300 English Cafes). Well save most of our celebrating for our 6th anniversary coming up (taking place in the future) in a few weeks.
Tags: Day, Independence Day
Johann Sebastian Bach was a brilliant German composer of the early 18th century.
Much of his music involves a complex geometry of repeated patterns. Some snippets of music may be repeated up or down a note, or perhaps inverted (while the original goes up in pitch, the inversion goes down) or even played backwards.
The brilliance comes from combining all these up, down, forwards and backwards musical themes into something that works as a musical composition.
Think of Bachs Crab Canon as a complex round (remember Three Blind Mice, or maybe Frere Jacques? The music can be read from either end.
The following video demonstrates the idea well. It uses a Mobius strip to show how the parts work upside down and back to front. (A Mobius strip can be made by twisting a long, thin rectangle of paper and joining the ends. Such an object has one surface and one edge only. See more at Mobius strip.)
For more information, see this analysis of the Crab Canon.
Tags: Bach, Bach Crab