Computational Origami and David Huffman

geeber writes "Here is an article about David Huffman's work in the mathematics of computational origami at the New York Times (soul sucking registration required). According to the article, computational origami, "also known as technical folding, or origami sekkei, draws on fields that include computational geometry, number theory, coding theory and linear algebra." David Huffman is also the inventor of Huffman coding used in MP3s and was mentioned prieviously here."

Comments

It's great

[xenostar]

It's great to see someone so skillfully merge his knowledge of computer science and his appreciation for good aesthetics into such beautiful shapes. It seems many people who have an interest in programming and design try to merge these skills together, but more often than not the results are nothing but mindless attempts at combining the two just for the sake of it. It is good to see someone who has an real understanding of both and who can create meaningful examples of why each part is such a big part of the other.

OT: Drop the lame comments (General /. comment)

[MasterLock]

Can we drop the lame "(soul sucking registration required)" comments everytime a NY Times or similiar news posting is displayed? Those who read here are quite knowledgeable in getting around the registration process; if not, someone's going to post a comment with a Google link within minutes of posting anyways.

A simple "reg. req." is sufficient.

Origami as an Art

[artlu]

It seems to me that this is just taking another piece of art and removing the uniqueness of it. By taking Origami to a technical level is similar to looking at computer generated images instead of works of art. Granted, the ideas that are being calculated are still unique, but the look and feel may not be.
Aj

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Re:Origami as an Art

[Jonboy X]

Bah, look at any of the great masters of art. There are two parts, really: the actual art/inspiration part and the craft/technique of rendering your ideas into a form that others will want to observe. Everyone gets inspired from time to time. The reason we're not all full-time artists is that it takes effort and dedication to get "good" at it.

Mathematical elegance - beauty

[Curious__George]

I think it is intriguing that there is a correlation between "elegant mathematics" and visual elegance/beauty. Makes you think about some of the "big questions", doesn't it?

The mathematician G. H. Hardy wrote that "there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics." Dr. Huffman, who gave concrete form to beautiful mathematical relations, would no doubt have agreed. In a talk he gave at U.C. Santa Cruz in 1979 to an audience of artists and scientists, he noted that it was rare for the two groups to communicate with one another.

"I don't claim to be an artist. I'm not even sure how to define art," he said. "But I find it natural that the elegant mathematical theorems associated with paper surfaces should lead to visual elegance as well."

... used in MP3s?

[julesh]

[...] Huffman coding used in MP3s [...]

Why does everything have to be compared to MP3s? Why couldn't it have been 'Huffman coding used in ZIP files' or '[...] used by GZip' or '[...] used by the huffyuv lossless video codec' or any of about 5 million other applications that use huffman coding. Most of which are a lot more specific than MP3 which also uses a cocktail of other techniques to achieve compression and is, above all else, lossy, which huffman coding isn't.

To be transmitted across the Internet, this message was broken down into bits, like MP3s are.

Pure Math strikes again

[Artifakt]

As usual, several areas of math that are widely considered "pure" rather than "applied" turn out to have real world implications. The relationship of something as apparently trivial as folding paper to compressing and encoding data is a remarkable example of isomorphism in itself, beyond that:

If you're funding education or pure research, you never know when something will unexpectedly prove useful, or even valuable.

If you're the NSA, the RIAA, or any regulator you never know when or where the djinni will get out of the bottle.

(Insert pithy saying about chinese ideograms for danger and opportunity being isomorphic)

What unadulterated load of complete bullshit.

[jotaeleemeese]

Do you know how many hours do classical musicians practice per day their technique? Obviously not.

Do you know how many hours do dancers practice their physical technoique? Certainly not.

Do you know that many of the most insightful writers will be voraceous readers and will constantly refer to grammar books, dictionaries and other technical resources? It would seem you don't.

Inspiration is frankly overrated, such point of view regarding "inspiration by the muses" so highly is a hangover of the XIX century romantic mentalitly, which of course forgot how the artists of that time worked uncountable hours to polish their technique.