Reflection on Math Art Project

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When we were first deciding on which art piece to choose we had everyone pick 2 of their favourites and we would pick one that everyone agreed on. Our decision led us to the piece by Margaret Kepner. Her spiral contained 400+ numbers and I didn't know how to recreate it without drawing it by hand. Fortunately, Kyle was able to write a code in LaTeX that made life much easier.
Original
At first, I thought the concept(prime numbers) behind the art was a little too simple. But there was much more to understand, such as the different types of numbers (happy, triangular, lucky, etc.). Also the Ulam Spiral, which was the inspiration for her piece, was very interesting to learn about. It was more complex than I expected!

Replica
When we were to put our own spin on the spiral, we had to think of 3 different types of numbers we could use instead of prime/happy/triangular numbers. We did some research on different types of numbers and ended up with going with prime/lucky/perfect square numbers. We decided to keep prime numbers because that was kind of the basis of the whole spiral (Ulam's spiral). We chose lucky numbers because it sounded interesting and we chose perfect squares just because it was simple and easy to do.
Our interpretation
Regarding our presentation in class, I think it went quite smoothly other than the technical difficulties at the beginning. Some things that I definitely could have improved on was slowing down. I felt like I was rushing through my part, maybe because I was nervous. I could have also asked the class questions and got more interaction instead of just lecturing. Our in-class activity seemed like it went okay, it wasn't amazing because a lot of people could not finish and didn't the pattern we were trying to show them. Overall this project was a success and it was enjoyable. A lot of credit goes to Kyle for writing the code because it saved us a TON of work!

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