Mathematica 8: Resources, free online seminars, plus TED-talk video: "Teaching kids real math with computers"

I admit it.  Once in a while, I wake up after having a dream with a re-occurring theme of algorithms, technology, and programming.  It happened again this morning, inspiring me to take a look at the Wolfram Mathematica website. 


Here are a few on-line seminars I might take a look at soon:

Seminar: What's New in Mathematica 8?

"To give a broad overview of the major new features in Mathematica 8, including free-form linguistic input and Wolfram|Alpha integration, probability and statistics, finance, control systems, graphs and networks, improved image processing, wavelet analysis, C code generation, and more, using example-driven material."

Statistics and Data Analysis with Mathematica 8
Image Processing with Mathematica (Seminar description and registration)


Look at what I found while exploring the Wolfram suite of websites!


TEDGlobal 2010: 
Conrad Wolfram: Teaching kids real math with computers



RELATED
Mathematica 8 Seminar Calendar
Image Processing and Analysis (Info)
Interface development with Mathematica (I haven't tried this out.)
Here are a few links about the arts and math, from the Wolfram site:
Mathematica and High Fashion
Art Inspires a Lesson in Calculus
Computer Science PRofessor Sculpts Award-Winning Art with Mathematica
Wolfram Tones: An experiment in a new kind of music
Mathematica Music Demonstrations
Computerbasedmath.org 
Conrad Wolfram
Stephen Wolfram

FYI:  For those of you who are curious to know more about my technology dreams, I plan to devote a few posts about them in the future.   Here's a link to a post I wrote after waking up from a dream about haptic interfaces:

Last night I dreamt about haptic touch-screen overlays...

Jamendo Jammap, Marker/Music: Google music map mashups bring the world of music right to you!

Here are a couple of interesting ways people are using Google Maps for music:

Screenshot of Jammap, featuring music from Brazil, created by Cassioso Oliveira :

China:

Marker/Music

"marker/music is an interactive sound and music map created by Darren Solomon, the students and faculty of Northern State University, and members of the community of Aberdeen, South Dakota. From October 18th - 22nd, 2010, the group shot over 70 videos in the area, from which 12 were chosen to be embedded in a custom Google map. The project was inspired by Darren's inbflat.net, and is intended to explore the concept by producing the entire project locally in a single community, rather than through internet-based crowdsourcing." -marker/music website

RELATED

Google Maps Mania Posts (tagged Music Maps)

Jammap v03! A geolocation based music player :)

(Scroll down for "how-to" information.)


Thanks to Richard Byrne and Julien Llanas for sharing this information!

JavaScript HTML5 iPad Multi-touch Game Controller "How-To" by Seb Lee-Delisle

I'm glad I decided to glance at Twitter today and find a tweet with a link to Seb LeeDesilse's Creatively Digital website.  If you are interested in learning more about HTML5, Canvas, the iPad, multi-touch, etc, the site might be worth taking your time to explore. Here is the link:
Multi-touch game controller in JavaScript HTML5 for iPad (Seb Lee-Delisle, Creatively Digital, 4/15/11)


Seb's post includes the following video, plus sample code:

About Seb Lee-Delisle: "Seb is a digital media consultant and founding partner at award-winning agency Plug-in Media. He specialises in programming creative visual effects and interfaces for games, physics, motion detection, 3D and visual effects (like particle systems). His work has pushed the boundaries of what is possible both on and off the web, and won a BAFTA for the Plug-in Media project Big and Small for the BBC."

"He lectures and runs training courses world-wide and speaks at conferences worldwide such as iDesign, FMX, FITC, Droidcon, Adobe MAX and many others. He blogs at sebleedelisle.com  and tweets at @seb_ly."


RELATED
Touching and Gesturing in the iPhone
nroberts, Sitepen, July 10, 2008

For more "how-two" information, check out Seb's tutorials and guides - it looks like his website is a treasure trove of information -  here are a couple of gems:
3D engine in 10 lines
HTML5 Canvas 3D Particles
HTML5 canvas sprite optimisation


Don't forget to listen to the "Creative Coding" podcasts, a collaboration between Seb Lee-Delisle and Iain Lobb: 
Podcast episode 6: openFrameworks, Adobe CS5.5, and multi-touch gaming

Thanks to Alpay Kasal for the tweet about this link!

Interactive Display with 4,500 Streaming Videos, Powered by a NAND flashcard by Fusion-io

The video wall below streams 4,500 videos through Fusion-io's NAND flash card. It can take care of 1 million transactions per second, the equivalent of 6 gigabytes of throughput per second, according to a recent Computerworld post by Lucas Mearian.


Wow.




FYI:  Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, serves as Fusion-io's chief scientist.
RELATED
What a wall of 4,500 video streams looks like
Lucas Mearian, Computerworld 4/12/11
Fusion-IO Jobs (Colorado)
SIGGRAPH 2009 Version of Fusion-io's Streaming Video Wall:






SOMEWHAT RELATED
Driving Data Warehousing with ioMemory
Fusion-io Whitepaper 1/11/11
Transcription:  Fusion-io CEO David Flynn on Enabling a New Class of Cloud Computing Apps
Bert Latamore, Wikibon, 4/8/11
"We're talking about a fundamental new building-block. So it impacts and will impact everything in the entire data center. In the database world it typically means that a database server can do about 10X the throughput, for the same server. And those queries are answered 30%-40% faster. So it means faster page loads, more throughput per server. So Answers.com retrofitted their MySQL scale-out database tier and saw 9X the throughput per server. What they chose to do was to shrink the database farm four-to-one. So they got a 75% consolidation, and with that remaining one-out-of-four servers they were still getting more than twice the throughput they had before." - David Flynn

Folk Dance Your Algorithms! (Intercultural Computer Science Education, Sapientia University, Romania)

An interesting post by Nathan Yau, of Flowing Data, crossed my path today.  I anticipated something about interesting information visualizations, but to my surprise, I had a chance to view a couple of videos of.... folk dancers!    Nathan shared information about about Algo-rythmics, a project created by researchers from Sapientia University (Romania) that blends art, culture, and technology to enhance computer programming education: 

"Sorting algorithms demonstrated with Hungarian folk dance".

Before viewing the videos below, take a moment to read the abstract from a research paper written by some of the people behind the Algo-rythmics project:

Zoltan Katai and Laszio Toth (2008)  Technologically and artistically enhanced multi-sensory computer-programming education Teaching and Teacher Education Volume 26, Issue 2, February 2010, Pages 244-251

Abstract

"Over the last decades more and more research has analysed relatively new or rediscovered teaching–learning concepts like blended, hybrid, multi-sensory or technologically enhanced learning. This increased interest in these educational forms can be explained by new exciting discoveries in brain research and cognitive psychology, as well as by the accelerated integration of technology (computers, intranets, internet, etc.) in education. We have investigated how the educationally valuable outcomes of these trends could be implemented in computer-programming education and in what ways this process could be catalysed by arts (dance, music, rhythm, theatrical role-playing). We present a theoretical basis for technologically and artistically enhanced multi-sensory teaching–learning strategies. This work focuses particularly on how dance can be involved in computer science classes."

Sapientia University, Mathematics–Informatics Department, Tirgu Mures/Corunca, Soseaua Sighisoarei 1C, 540485, Romania

"In the case of each algorithm we chose such implementation version that fits best with the characteristics of the corresponding folk dance. After students have understood the key features of the algorithm the teacher should discuss with them the possibilities the algorithm can be optimized." AlgoRythmics  (Also see the Alog-rythmics Facebook page)

FYI: There will be additional algorithm concepts presented through folk dances in the near future on the AlgoRythmic's YouTube channel.  

Enjoy!

Insert-sort with Romanian Folk Dance

Bubble Sort with Hungarian ("Csango") Folk Dance

Credits (as listed on the AlgoRythmics YouTube Channel)

Created at Sapientia University, Tirgu Mures (Marosvásárhely), Romania.
Directed by Kátai Zoltán and Tóth László. 
In cooperation with "Maros Művészegyüttes", Tirgu Mures (Marosvásárhely), Romania.
Choreographer: Füzesi Albert. 
Video: Lőrinc Lajos, Körmöcki Zoltán. 
Supported by "Szülőföld Alap" and evoline company.

Select-sort with Gypsy Folk Dance

Shell-sort with Hungarian (Szekely) Folk Dance

RELATED

Sorting algorithms demonstrated with Hungarian folk dance

Nathan Yau, Flowing Data, 4/14/11

Sorting algorithms as dances

I Programmer, 2/10/11

AlgoRythmics:  Sorting Algorithms in European Folk Dance

Clyde Smith, All World Dance, 4/13/11

Sorting Algorithm Animations

Pervasive Retail: Theme of the April-June edition of Pervasive Computing (IEEE)

This is just a teaser.  I'll have time to read it next week when I'm on break!


FYI: This is one of my favorite tech journals. This issue's theme focuses on the use of pervasive technology in retail settings.   Other topics in this issue include wearables, pervasive health, smartphone computing in the classroom, innovative Ubicomp products, and more.


IEEE Pervasive Computing