Playing with Wolfram Playing Cards (opens in new tab)

(adereth.github.io)

184 pointsAdrock8y ago39 comments

39 comments

godelski8y ago

If the OP is here, I found the cup on their site. It lets me put it in my cart

http://store.wolfram.com/view/misc/index.str#heart-spikey-mu...

AdrockOP8y ago

They put it back in the store after they saw my tweet :p

godelski8y ago

That's a lot of power. Use it wisely.

tsomctl8y ago

I'm always amazed by how expressive Mathematica is. Writing some of these expressions imperatively would be significantly more than one line.

henrikeh8y ago

I’ve been toying with an idea for a while. Mathematica/Wolfram is a surprisingly interesting language from a design p.o.v. — everything from the Lisp origins, syntax sugar, syntax highlighting and formatting, all the things mentioned in another comment etc.

I’ve been thinking about writing about some of these details and how other languages and editors could be inspired.

Anybody who thinks there might be interest?

Chris20488y ago

Yep!

fjsolwmv8y ago

These are mostly just API calls with arguments, with some simple lambdas. You can implement that in any language.

maliker8y ago

I think the magic of Mathematica is the combination of (1) a huge collection of well-maintained CAS and math functions (2) great graphics and animation support (3) the notebook interface (which jupyter is catching up on fast) and (4) some of the best documentation in the industry.

Modifying the Mathematica code after its written, however, is very tricky.

blt8y ago

Even if some of the components in Mathematica are not state-of-the-art, there's a huge synergy benefit from having everything together in one environment, using the same datatypes. I think that's the big benefit of Mathematica and Matlab. Python can match (or exceed) a lot of their capabilities but you spend all this time with package managers, converting data types, etc.

1 more reply

sizzzzlerz8y ago

What you said plus the accuracy and precision to which results are computed. They're effectively limited only by the amount memory you have and your patience. And even patience isn't required unless you're calculating pi to trillions of digits. It's really fast.

goldenkey8y ago

Mathematica is functional. So..you can but you can't. Expressiveness..its a virtue, and Mathematica offers it through being a pattern matched, lazy binding, functional language, with both lexical and block scope, with amazing operators built in for the basic data types.

Shameless plug: https://scrollto.com/the-generalized-mean-an-algorithmic-app...

The code could maybe be written in another language but the fact that Mathematica allows for unbound variables and has beautiful functional library calls like Fold, make it very elegant to write once and work with almost any arguments. Wolfram Cloud is free and Mathematica has a trial, if you did want to fool around.

Mathematica is written in C++, it would be nice to see Wolfram head in the direction of having it produce binaries. It could become a major language of general development if that ever became the case. But Wolfram has always been very "particular" with his goals. One can dream...

eggy8y ago

I love Mathematica too, so I bought the Home edition. I play in a lot, but at work and home I keep J open [1]. It has a shell and an IDE of sorts if you want it. Something like the geometric mean in your article is:

#%:/

define it as gm =: # %:

# is tally or number of terms

%: is root

* multiply

/ apply over or map

gm 1 100

It also has plot libraries, graphics and is very fast for an interpreted language. Perfect for math and statistics. I do like the curated data available to Mathematica, and WL or Wolfram Language is able to be coded functionally, imperatively, or any way you might want.

  [1] jsoftware.com

1 more reply

tsomctl8y ago

When I say Mathematica, I mean both the language and the functions they provide.

cgmg8y ago

Then again, all code is 'just' a bunch of RAM instructions, which can be implemented in any (Turing-complete) language. That doesn't tell us anything about how elegant or expressive it is.

amelius8y ago

I'm surprised that they didn't choose a purely functional language for Mathematica.

goldenkey8y ago

Don't know why you are being downvoted. Mathematica is a pattern matching language. You set downvalues or upvalues usually. It does have functional syntax and functional methods but the base of it is pattern matching. That contributes to its rather poor performance and necessity to use Compile for C level perf. Most likely Wolfram was inspired by a couple other CAS being developed around the time he started developing Mathematica.

sushisource8y ago

Those are really neat. I did say "of course" sarcastically out loud when I got to the King.

AdrockOP8y ago

Yeah, I lost it at that one. I'm not sure if that's his doing or just an internal troll.

ninju8y ago

They should provide a QR code on each card that sends you to the Wolfram site with the expression being executed, that way when you are waiting your turn on Hold-em you can watch the animation from your phone

(it must have been a pain to hand type those expressions...great job!)

ukoki8y ago

Price: £4 — great! Shipping: £12 — nope!

disconcision8y ago

shipping to canada is an utterly inexplicable 47 dollars, apparently not including taxes and duty

cal5k8y ago

Basically they ship the deck all by itself in a 747.

jgamman8y ago

weird, same price to get to NZ! $5 for the cards, $47 for the shipping.... thx but I'll pass.

hackpert8y ago

Indeed, of all the tech company swag I've seen and collected, from a pure nerdiness metric, I'd wager Wolfram's remains one of the coolest by far.

zitterbewegung8y ago

A CAS with beautiful graphing is a big feature that is required in most situations and their swag wants to sell that point .

tehsauce8y ago

The code for these is really short and elegant! Keep in mind when you want to make some graphics that aren't owned by the "king", the much more powerful (though some boilerplate is required) open source libraries like p5.js and three.js are capable of rendering these real-time in the browser!

cprecioso8y ago

Did you mean D3 instead of three.js?

pavel_lishin8y ago

How plausible are animated versions of these in real life? What's the thinnest we can make a display+processor combo that can be powered by, say, the heat from my hands?

gh02t8y ago

I don't think you could practically power a display + processor combo with the heat from your hands. The best I can find on the power radiated by your hands is this article

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/this-flashlight-is...

That article says you can get about 5 milliwatts using a Peltier converter, so working backwards based on Peltier converters being ~10% efficient that's only 50 milliwatts radiated by your hands. Even with an ideal 100% efficient converter that turns 100% of that energy into electricity, combined with a 100% efficient step up converter to raise the voltage that's not a lot to work with, that's barely enough power to light a couple of blue LEDs, much less a display and a microcontroller capable of rendering 3D graphics.

anigbrowl8y ago

What if it's just a display plus a wireless receiver? SMartphones have not shrunk much over the last decade but that's cause of the constant pursuit of more functionality. I'd be quite interested to see how minimal they could go. I'll bet on playing card-size active displays within 10 years.

kaffeemitsahne8y ago

It could certainly be done with lenticular printing (to some extent...)

msangi8y ago

This reminds me of pixel spirit: a tarot cards deck with beautiful pictures made from shaders.

https://github.com/patriciogonzalezvivo/PixelSpiritDeck/blob...

tunesmith8y ago

The seven of clubs actually vaguely frightened me. What an appetite.

m00s38y ago

Cool cards. What's not cool is $50 shipping on $5 cards. To Canada...

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

39 comments

godelski8y ago

If the OP is here, I found the cup on their site. It lets me put it in my cart

http://store.wolfram.com/view/misc/index.str#heart-spikey-mu...

AdrockOP8y ago

They put it back in the store after they saw my tweet :p

godelski8y ago

That's a lot of power. Use it wisely.

tsomctl8y ago

I'm always amazed by how expressive Mathematica is. Writing some of these expressions imperatively would be significantly more than one line.

henrikeh8y ago

I’ve been thinking about writing about some of these details and how other languages and editors could be inspired.

Anybody who thinks there might be interest?

Chris20488y ago

Yep!

fjsolwmv8y ago

These are mostly just API calls with arguments, with some simple lambdas. You can implement that in any language.

maliker8y ago

Modifying the Mathematica code after its written, however, is very tricky.

blt8y ago

1 more reply

sizzzzlerz8y ago

goldenkey8y ago

Shameless plug: https://scrollto.com/the-generalized-mean-an-algorithmic-app...

eggy8y ago

#%:/

define it as gm =: # %:

# is tally or number of terms

%: is root

* multiply

/ apply over or map

gm 1 100

  [1] jsoftware.com

1 more reply

tsomctl8y ago

When I say Mathematica, I mean both the language and the functions they provide.

cgmg8y ago

Then again, all code is 'just' a bunch of RAM instructions, which can be implemented in any (Turing-complete) language. That doesn't tell us anything about how elegant or expressive it is.

amelius8y ago

I'm surprised that they didn't choose a purely functional language for Mathematica.

goldenkey8y ago

sushisource8y ago

Those are really neat. I did say "of course" sarcastically out loud when I got to the King.

AdrockOP8y ago

Yeah, I lost it at that one. I'm not sure if that's his doing or just an internal troll.

ninju8y ago

(it must have been a pain to hand type those expressions...great job!)

ukoki8y ago

Price: £4 — great! Shipping: £12 — nope!

disconcision8y ago

shipping to canada is an utterly inexplicable 47 dollars, apparently not including taxes and duty

cal5k8y ago

Basically they ship the deck all by itself in a 747.

jgamman8y ago

weird, same price to get to NZ! $5 for the cards, $47 for the shipping.... thx but I'll pass.

hackpert8y ago

Indeed, of all the tech company swag I've seen and collected, from a pure nerdiness metric, I'd wager Wolfram's remains one of the coolest by far.

zitterbewegung8y ago

A CAS with beautiful graphing is a big feature that is required in most situations and their swag wants to sell that point .

tehsauce8y ago

cprecioso8y ago

Did you mean D3 instead of three.js?

pavel_lishin8y ago

How plausible are animated versions of these in real life? What's the thinnest we can make a display+processor combo that can be powered by, say, the heat from my hands?

gh02t8y ago

I don't think you could practically power a display + processor combo with the heat from your hands. The best I can find on the power radiated by your hands is this article

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/this-flashlight-is...

anigbrowl8y ago

kaffeemitsahne8y ago

It could certainly be done with lenticular printing (to some extent...)

msangi8y ago

This reminds me of pixel spirit: a tarot cards deck with beautiful pictures made from shaders.

https://github.com/patriciogonzalezvivo/PixelSpiritDeck/blob...

tunesmith8y ago

The seven of clubs actually vaguely frightened me. What an appetite.

m00s38y ago

Cool cards. What's not cool is $50 shipping on $5 cards. To Canada...

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse