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Computational Origami and David Huffman

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the everyone-likes-math dept.

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."

3 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Origami as an Art by artlu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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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  2. Mathematical elegance - beauty by Curious__George · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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."
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  3. ... used in MP3s? by julesh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    [...] 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.