A blog of Python-related topics and code.
How do Telegraph readers die?
Posted by: christian on 22 Apr 2016
The Daily Telegraph publishes an announcements page online. The death announcements category consists of a series of short paragraphs placed by readers communicating the recent death of a relative. The fact that these relatives often expire either "peacefully" or "suddenly" (and sometimes both) is the basis of the peacefully/suddenly game: a popular pastime for long train journeys in the United Kingdom.
The "Mystery Curve"
Posted by: christian on 20 Apr 2016
A family of curves in the complex plane may be generated by the formula:
Visualizing modular multiplication tables
Posted by: christian on 18 Apr 2016
Here is a short Python program to visualize the table of multiplication modulo $n$. The integers $i$ and $j = 1,2,3,\cdots,N-1$ number the rows and columns of the image plot produced. $n$ and $N$ are supplied as command line arguments (if $N$ is not supplied, it defaults to $n$).
Adding ticks to a Matplotlib line
Posted by: christian on 31 Mar 2016
LineTicks is a simple class that I put together to add tick marks and labels to a plotted line (not the axes, which Matplotlib already handles well with lots of methods for customization). The code is available on github and released under the Apache 2.0 licence.
Converting a spectrum to a colour
Posted by: christian on 27 Mar 2016
This article presents a Python script to map a spectrum of wavelengths to a representation of a colour. There is no unique way to do this, but the formulation used here is based on the CIE colour matching functions, $\bar{x}(\lambda)$, $\bar{y}(\lambda)$ and $\bar{z}(\lambda)$. These model the chromatic response of a "standard observer" by mapping a power spectrum of wavelengths, $P(\lambda)$, to a set of tristimulus values, $X$, $Y$ and $Z$, analogous to the actual response of the three types of cone cell in the human eye.