The Joy of Math

Daddy has some quite interesting books that I like to look at. Recently, I picked up a book about doing mathematics using a computer program called Scientific Workplace. What attracted by were the pretty pictures on the front cover of the book. Daddy read to me the part of the book on making two and three dimensional graphs. We would look at a graph together, and I'd tell him what it reminded me of. We saw graphs of mountains, butterflies, spirals, seashells, and lots of other things. Daddy told me that the formula for each graph is like a kind of instruction manual for how to draw the picture. In some cases the instructions were so simple that I could do them myself. The pictures above were graphs I made with just a little help from Daddy. The one for the ball I made by typing the number "1" on the computer. Then Daddy helped me to guide the mouse to a command called "Plot spherical" and I clicked the mouse. "Yay Aidan!" I cried when the pretty graph of the ball showed up. Then I made the picture of the cup you see on your screen. Here I again typed the number "1" and Daddy helped me to click "plot cylindrical" to make it. I love making pictures on the computer. By the way, for you math nerds out there, Daddy tells me that my pictures have the official math names unit sphere and unit cylinder.

I liked math so much that I found another one of Daddy's books, a guide to Mathematica, and plunked the book and myself down on Mommy's lap for story time. While Mommy looked at the pictures with me she didn't know how to make them on the computer. I guess that's a skill for Aidan and Daddy.