I Will Derive

Jamie stumbled upon a very choice video this morning called I Will Derive. To the tune of some song you've never heard before, singing about subjects you know nothing about... oh and a a TI-84 cameo. It features the dopiest dancing you'll see on YouTube today. I promise.

Slopes and curves

[TropicalCoder]

I loved the video! What a coincidence - just spent the last couple of days with similar problems, trying to develop a curve for an audio compression algorithm. I began with logarithmic curves, but in the end, chose quadratic curves in place of the logarithmic curves because they provide a very smooth transition from linear slope to curved. Though the logarithmic curves did as well provide a nice smooth curve, they had an abrupt transition at the point where that curve joined the linear slope. In the end, after algebraically factoring my Quadratic Bezier, I ended up with an incredibly simple formula: y = (x - (x*x)/coefficient). The problem is that the term (x*x)/coefficient can never be allowed to grow larger than x, and in fact, is limited to coefficient = 0.5. On the other side, as you approach a large value for 'coefficient', you essentially end up with y = x.

Only one problem - in the end, to get any compression beyond a few dBs I needed to employ recursion - not the best solution...

void Recurve(double *pX, int recursionLevel, int *pCount)

{

if((*pCount)++ == recursionLevel)return;

*pX = *pX - (*pX * *pX)/2.0;

Recurve(pX, recursionLevel, pCount);

}

Anybody got any experience with this?

Re:Excuse me while I gouge my eyes out with a spoo

[Vectronic]

Im not against little comedic stuff like this, or the Idle section itself, it was actually a good idea. But I think that the front page (or any of the main 'news' sections) should be for tech/science/economy/etc "stuff that matters"

This is rightly in the Idle section, and if you were just looking for something to pass a few minutes and maybe a giggle or two... "choose" to go to the Idle section... just like you would choose to wander around YouTube by itself without having Slashdot.

Weekend or not, I think most people expect Slashdot to provide informative "nerdy" things with a certain amount of dignity.

Re:Derive?

[therpham]

In every calculus class I've taken, saying "derive" instead of "differentiate" has not been met kindly by any sort of mathematician, so it bothers me too.

Right Idea, wrong website

[an.echte.trilingue]

Netcraft doesn't track site popularity AFAIK, but Alexa does. And alexa does in fact confirm: slashdot [alexa.com] is [alexa.com] dying [alexa.com].

I mean, what the fuck guys? This is such an awesome website. I know that stupid videos get a lot of click throughs in the short term, but you're driving away your regulars with that silly shit. News, fellas, post news.

I will survive - Gloria Gaynor

[Aging_Newbie]

Here is a video of the original song [youtube.com]. which was first released in 1978 [wikipedia.org]