[HN Gopher] Desmos 3D graphing calculator
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Desmos 3D graphing calculator
Author : benpm
Score : 188 points
Date : 2023-10-12 16:05 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.desmos.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.desmos.com)
| titaniumtown wrote:
| Desmos is the best, free (as in cost) and easily accessible
| graphing calculator out there. I wish it was opensource though.
| I've even tried to make an alternative and it's really hard to
| match their functionality (or I'm just inexperienced). I hope an
| opensource alternative crops up.
|
| Edit: Seems there has https://www.geogebra.org/
| knlje wrote:
| I've been using GeoGebra for years. I have tried Desmos twice
| but couldn't immediately spot the differences. What are the
| benefits of Desmos over GeoGebra?
| titaniumtown wrote:
| I haven't heard of GeoGebra before! Really cool. Thanks for
| pointing that out.
| drsopp wrote:
| I just want to chime in on Geogebra. I used it (was more or
| less forced to) when teaching math in high school for about
| 12 years. It is great for guided exploration, but it is
| very buggy. I am confident many students must have lost
| points in their math exams because of some of those bugs.
| lights0123 wrote:
| Desmos has a far smoother UI. Geogebra will often convert
| equations into its own format after clicking away from the
| equation editor, and if you mistyped or want to change the
| structure you must erase and re-type the whole thing--for
| example, typing f(x) will convert the equation into its own
| format where you can't edit parameters or the function name.
| Desmos leaves your input as text, allowing you to change
| input at the character level. From my high school experience
| where both were used frequently, a lot of frustration was
| expressed with Geogebra where missing a parenthesis forced
| you to re-type the entire equation since it often assumed the
| bulk of your equation was a parameter, and there was no way
| to correct it.
| nsajko wrote:
| > frustration was expressed with Geogebra where missing a
| parenthesis forced you to re-type the entire equation since
| it often assumed the bulk of your equation was a parameter,
| and there was no way to correct it.
|
| I believe this may simply be a case of not knowing Geogebra
| well, or it's simply caused by differences in taste/being
| accustomed to a single user interface. In my experience,
| Geogebra offers the ability to edit the source of any
| object after selecting its settings. So it was just two
| clicks away.
|
| This is Geogebra the Electron app, though, I think there's
| also a Web app and I think there was also a Java app some
| time before.
| namibj wrote:
| GeoGebra is the closest I know, at least when limiting to
| copyleft [or theoretically the SQLite model would be fine, but
| it's pretty unique in dependability and selflessness for open
| source projects not subject to copyleft] "middle/high school
| (constructive?) geometry & function graphing teaching aid"
| classroom-grade robustness: bored & curious children are
| somewhat creative in their play/"(ab)use" of teaching/classroom
| software: buggy/anti-intuitive software can't survive the
| combination of:
|
| - bored curious children playing around, bright and capable
| curious children exploring (way) beyond what the teacher
| explained, - normal students just getting by with the topic and
| relying on the software to aid their subject matter
| comprehension, - and teachers trying to plan lessons around it
| where they have to rely on it not needing a tutorial because
| there wouldn't really be time for such in the curriculum
| schedule.
| Xerox9213 wrote:
| One of my favourite things about (desktop) Geogebra is its
| ability to export to tikz. Making complicated geometric
| shapes in a latex file can be done so easily with Geogebra.
| Perhaps not as elegant as Castel, but still quite nice.
|
| https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/
| omneity wrote:
| I've been using Geogebra since it was recommended to me by my
| high-school math teacher, what feels like almost a century ago.
|
| It never disappointed!
|
| Desmos looks like a solid spiritual successor, if it wasn't
| closed source.
| BD103 wrote:
| Desmos does have a Github page, but unfortunately the main
| codebase is not public. Their API docs are well written,
| though, so it's really easy to embed Desmos into your site.
|
| [^1]: https://github.com/desmosinc
|
| [^2]: https://www.desmos.com/api/v1.8/docs/index.html
| soegaard wrote:
| Commercial usage og Geogebra needs a license.
|
| https://www.geogebra.org/m/pR5DME5S#material/yumfrbjr
|
| I don't understand how their license and the GPL can co-exist?
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| Wow this is painfully slow, the CPU usage for rotating the scene
| is insane, I can't look at the code right now but wow.. I expect
| better from them
|
| EDIT: If you are using Chrome, make sure you are on the latest
| version, the latest v118 fixed it for me
| amanj41 wrote:
| Could you share what function you plotted? A very simple z =
| x^2 + y^2 worked fine so I'm curious where its limits are
| harmonium1729 wrote:
| Curious - do you have hardware acceleration disabled? Rotating
| the scene shouldn't be hammering the CPU if hardware
| acceleration is enabled. [disclaimer: I work at Desmos]
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| I was using Chrome 117, looks like there was a new 118
| update, it now is butter smooth!
|
| Looks like 117 was just broken
| harmonium1729 wrote:
| Nice! Really good to know. We'll add that to our list of
| device/browser combos that might cause trouble so that at
| minimum we can warn folks. It's an early beta so we're
| enthusiastically collecting any examples (system
| configurations and also graphs) that cause problems, so if
| you see anything amiss we'd love to hear about it
| (feedback@desmos.com). [disclaimer: I work at Desmos]
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| Since you work at Desmos: is there any way to have
| animated variables start/stop based on the value of some
| other variable? Or functions that graph different
| formulas based on a conditional? Etc.
|
| For example, variable X is continuously cycling between
| -10 and +10, but only when variable D is > 1. At my son's
| school, there is a kind of interactive demoscene going on
| using Desmos (the kids believe that the school cannot
| block Desmos from the Chromebooks, therefore they will
| always have it available).
| harmonium1729 wrote:
| Fun question. There are a couple options:
|
| (1) the more straightforward (but less powerful) option
| is to use the dynamic bounds for a slider. Here, "a" is
| set to animate, but the bounds don't let it move if b=0:
| https://www.desmos.com/calculator/mqhhpso67r
|
| (2) the more general feature that allows for complex
| scripting behavior is called "actions." Here's an example
| that uses that, where it's more of a genuine play/pause:
| https://www.desmos.com/calculator/gzqwx36lo0
|
| It's a beta feature that needs to be enabled, but anyone
| can turn it on. More here: https://help.desmos.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/4407725009165-Acti...
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| Thanks! I will pass those on
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Smooth as butter here, instant changes and fast rendering.
| v117.0.5938.152
| HeWhoLurksLate wrote:
| Desmos is honestly probably one of the best things to come out of
| the web- it's an impressive tool and I am truly thankful for all
| the insight it's given me in my mathematics classes. Super stoked
| to see what bananas things the desmos community makes with this!
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| what's the relationship between desmos and geogebra? is one a
| fork of the other one?
| lights0123 wrote:
| There is none, just competing products.
| namibj wrote:
| I don't think their codebases are particularly connected: AFAIK
| Desmos is a client-side browser app, so the software is
| distributed to the user for using in that way, which seems
| incompatible with the GPL3+ licensing of the GeoGebra codebase.
|
| https://github.com/geogebra/geogebra
| chaosprint wrote:
| Curious if this is using WebGPU
| luketaylor wrote:
| It's WebGL, not WebGPU
| WithinReason wrote:
| Well it passes the sin(x)sin(y)sin(z)>0.1 test
|
| Edit: also sin(x)sin(y)sin(z)+0.1sin(10x)sin(10y)sin(10z)>0.1
|
| https://www.desmos.com/3d/85d41ad6c6
| westurner wrote:
| ENH: desmos [3d]: Support complex exponents; with i and/or a
| complex() function
|
| Test equations for _geogebra_ : equation --
| what I think it looks like xi^2 -- Integer coordinate
| grid e^xpi -- Unit circle with another little circle
| also about the origin (0,0) e^(pi^x) -- crash / not
| responding: a(x)=e^(pi^(x)) though it seems
| to work with x in Z+ e**(x*pi*I) e^(x p
| i^p) -- somewhat scale-invariant interposed spirals around a
| single point attractor. (Zoom in/out)
|
| Only SageMath preprocesses Python to replace XOR (^) with exp()
| or **, so: f(x) = x^2 g(x) = x**2 #
| Python h(x) = exp(x, 2) x**2 # SymPy Gamma,
| Beta x**math.pi # Python: 3.141592653589793
| x**pi # SymPy: p x**1j # Python
| x**I # SymPy x**(1+I) # BUG/ENH: Plot
| complex expressions with SymPy import sympy as sy
| display(sy.E, sy.I, sy.pi) from sympy import E, pi, I
| x,y = sy.symbols('x,y', real=True); display(x,y) eq01 =
| sy.Eq(y, E**(x*pi*I)); display(eq01) eq02 = sy.Rel(y,
| E**(x*pi*I), '=='); display(eq02) func01 =
| sy.Function('f')(E**(x*pi*I)); display(func01) func02 =
| sy.Function('f')(eq02.rhs); display(func02) assert eq01
| == eq01 assert func01 == func02 import
| unittest test = unittest.TestCase()
| test.assertEqual(eq01, eq02) test.assertEqual(func01,
| func02)
|
| Sympy Gamma: https://gamma.sympy.org/
|
| Sympy Beta is SymPy Gamma compiled to WASM:
| https://github.com/eagleoflqj/sympy_beta
|
| What methods for visualizing complex coordinate(s) are helpful?
| You can map the complex coordinate into e.g. the z-axis; or is
| complex phase - as is necessary to model [qubit] wave functions
| psi - just another high-dimensional dimension to also
| visualize?
| RichieAHB wrote:
| My phone gets pretty warm when I zoom out but the UI remains
| nice and responsive ...
| xchkr1337 wrote:
| the actual rendering code is ran using a webworker in a
| separate thread
| andybak wrote:
| The equation editor is so intuitive. Here's something I got from
| just typing in stuff and tweaking it:
| https://www.desmos.com/3d/6f4cd9930d
| zem wrote:
| didn't realise desmos had a desktop client, but i've been a happy
| user of their android app for years. best calculator on android
| by far.
| acc_297 wrote:
| Desmos has had a place in my bookmark bar for years now this is a
| very cool addition.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| This is fantastic! So easy to move, zoom and rotate the graph
| with exactly the mouse buttons you'd expect. In most even
| commercial math packages this is always super clunky
| mkishi wrote:
| How does one move with the mouse? I could only find gestures
| for rotation and zoom; for movement I had to resort to manually
| entering coordinates in the settings.
| anthk wrote:
| I like calc paired with gnuplot.
|
| https://github.com/lcn2/calc
|
| inb4 dc(1)/bc(1)... calc supports complex numbers, C-like pseudo
| structures/functions, custom decimal points and lots more.
|
| Also, calc/gnuplot will run on a toaster or even legacy systems
| from 20-25 years ago.
| dang wrote:
| Related: https://blog.desmos.com/articles/beta-3d-release/
|
| (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37771661, but no thread
| there)
| amathprof wrote:
| This looks nice, and I could see using it in some cases when I
| teach 3D functions, especially for complex functions that require
| more accuracy. But when introducing 3D it's often nicer to have
| graphs that showing gridding rather than smooth curves. For most
| purposes I'll probably stick to CalcPlot3D. It also has some nice
| features for showing points and vectors on a function, doing
| contour plots, and a nice surface of revolution visualization.
|
| https://c3d.libretexts.org/CalcPlot3D/index.html
| tanvach wrote:
| There are a bunch of YouTubers making Desmos animations. I
| haven't played with it myself, but always find it fascinating
| with what people come up with.
|
| https://youtu.be/4_8eY_Ij-5k
| soegaard wrote:
| Is Desmos open source ?
|
| What's the pricing for commercial partners?
| creata wrote:
| Can someone here explain how this works?
|
| I'm not sure how reliable it is, but here's[1] an old Reddit
| comment describing the method that Desmos (2D) uses. That method
| works in 3D, so maybe Desmos 3D uses it, too.
|
| [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/desmos/comments/qlhmbc
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Fun, there was a program for the Amiga called "Doug's Math
| Aquarium" which I found to be pretty neat, it has a lot of that
| feel. Don't know how to get it to insert i (aka sqrt(-1)) but
| that can be worked around. Another fun thing would be color
| gradient for magnitude. Definitely fun times and super quick.
| JohnScolaro wrote:
| I can't wait to play Super Mario in this when someone inevitably
| makes a 3D rendering engine in it.
| tabiv wrote:
| This is my favorite online graphing calculator. It's been around
| for a while. It got me through pre-calculus.
| mhh__ wrote:
| I use it for (some) quant finance work. It's not a toy,
| shockingly versatile.
| iandanforth wrote:
| Thank you to whomever thought about gimbal lock when designing
| the rotate controls.
| agentbellnorm wrote:
| I've been using their 2d graphing calculator since college and
| love it
| njn wrote:
| This is very cool. I'm involved with an open source project
| that's similar to this, called 3Demos:
| https://3demos.ctl.columbia.edu/
|
| On github at https://github.com/ccnmtl/3demos
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(page generated 2023-10-12 21:00 UTC)