If you look at the algorithm description for my inverse symbolic calculator RIES: http://mrob.com/pub/ries/index-2.html#algorithm you can see an example of numbers being inserted in order of increasing "complexity". A graphical version of this would be pretty cool. RIES generates expressions with distinct values at a rate of about 5 million per minute, and they're kept in order the whole time. This shows that it would be pretty easy to generate a database sufficient for a number line that could be zoomed in to say, 8 or 10 orders of magnitude. Also, since RIES has been online for a few months (go to mrob.com/ries, type a number and hit return) and since (as on all web servers) there is a log of form submissions, I have thought that once I get enough data I could publish some kind of number line that is scaled so as to give more space to areas that contain popular numbers. There are three numbers given as suggestions right below the form, and I see those a lot. There is also a bias towards 42 (-: The results need to be smoothed a lot, and all detailed information needs to be discarded (a privacy concern: users like to put in dates and telephone numbers). At 06:24 AM 8/29/2012, James Propp wrote:
Has anyone created interactive software that lets one zoom in on the real line?
(One possible design would be an inverse symbolic calculator connected to a Google Maps interface.)
-- Robert Munafo -- mrob.com Follow me at: gplus.to/mrob - fb.com/mrob27 - twitter.com/mrob_27 - mrob27.wordpress.com - youtube.com/user/mrob143 - rilybot.blogspot.com