full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Ron Eglash: The fractals at the heart of African designs

Unscramble the Blue Letters


And finally, out of desperation, I said, "Well, let me explain Georg caontr in 1877." And I started explaining why I was there in Africa, and they got very excited when they saw the Cantor set. And one of them said, "Come here. I think I can help you out here." And so he took me through the initiation ritual for a baanma priest. And of course, I was only interested in the math, so the whole time, he kept sknhiag his head going, "You know, I didn't learn it this way." But I had to sleep with a kola nut next to my bed, beriud in sand, and give seven cinos to seven lepers and so on. And filanly, he revealed the truth of the matter. And it turns out it's a pseudo-random nembur generator using deterministic cahos. When you have a four-bit symbol, you then put it together with another one sideways. So even plus odd gives you odd. Odd plus even gives you odd. Even plus even gives you even. Odd plus odd gives you even. It's addioitn modulo 2, just like in the parity bit check on your computer. And then you take this syombl, and you put it back in so it's a self-generating disvretiy of symbols. They're truly using a kind of deterministic chaos in doing this. Now, because it's a binary code, you can actually implement this in hardware — what a fantastic teaching tool that should be in African engineering schools.

Open Cloze


And finally, out of desperation, I said, "Well, let me explain Georg ______ in 1877." And I started explaining why I was there in Africa, and they got very excited when they saw the Cantor set. And one of them said, "Come here. I think I can help you out here." And so he took me through the initiation ritual for a ______ priest. And of course, I was only interested in the math, so the whole time, he kept _______ his head going, "You know, I didn't learn it this way." But I had to sleep with a kola nut next to my bed, ______ in sand, and give seven _____ to seven lepers and so on. And _______, he revealed the truth of the matter. And it turns out it's a pseudo-random ______ generator using deterministic _____. When you have a four-bit symbol, you then put it together with another one sideways. So even plus odd gives you odd. Odd plus even gives you odd. Even plus even gives you even. Odd plus odd gives you even. It's ________ modulo 2, just like in the parity bit check on your computer. And then you take this ______, and you put it back in so it's a self-generating _________ of symbols. They're truly using a kind of deterministic chaos in doing this. Now, because it's a binary code, you can actually implement this in hardware — what a fantastic teaching tool that should be in African engineering schools.

Solution


  1. shaking
  2. symbol
  3. chaos
  4. addition
  5. finally
  6. number
  7. buried
  8. diversity
  9. bamana
  10. cantor
  11. coins

Original Text


And finally, out of desperation, I said, "Well, let me explain Georg Cantor in 1877." And I started explaining why I was there in Africa, and they got very excited when they saw the Cantor set. And one of them said, "Come here. I think I can help you out here." And so he took me through the initiation ritual for a Bamana priest. And of course, I was only interested in the math, so the whole time, he kept shaking his head going, "You know, I didn't learn it this way." But I had to sleep with a kola nut next to my bed, buried in sand, and give seven coins to seven lepers and so on. And finally, he revealed the truth of the matter. And it turns out it's a pseudo-random number generator using deterministic chaos. When you have a four-bit symbol, you then put it together with another one sideways. So even plus odd gives you odd. Odd plus even gives you odd. Even plus even gives you even. Odd plus odd gives you even. It's addition modulo 2, just like in the parity bit check on your computer. And then you take this symbol, and you put it back in so it's a self-generating diversity of symbols. They're truly using a kind of deterministic chaos in doing this. Now, because it's a binary code, you can actually implement this in hardware — what a fantastic teaching tool that should be in African engineering schools.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
infinite number 4
georg cantor 3
seed shape 2
aerial photograph 2
fractal model 2
tiny village 2
spirit people 2
stacked recursively 2
native american 2
kids learn 2
board game 2
deterministic chaos 2
binary code 2
brian eno 2


Important Words


  1. addition
  2. africa
  3. african
  4. bamana
  5. bed
  6. binary
  7. bit
  8. buried
  9. cantor
  10. chaos
  11. check
  12. code
  13. coins
  14. computer
  15. desperation
  16. deterministic
  17. diversity
  18. engineering
  19. excited
  20. explain
  21. explaining
  22. fantastic
  23. finally
  24. generator
  25. georg
  26. give
  27. hardware
  28. head
  29. implement
  30. initiation
  31. interested
  32. kind
  33. kola
  34. learn
  35. lepers
  36. math
  37. matter
  38. modulo
  39. number
  40. nut
  41. odd
  42. parity
  43. priest
  44. put
  45. revealed
  46. ritual
  47. sand
  48. schools
  49. set
  50. shaking
  51. sideways
  52. sleep
  53. started
  54. symbol
  55. symbols
  56. teaching
  57. time
  58. tool
  59. truth
  60. turns