Conway notation

en.wikipedia.org

75 points·tosh··7 comments

Got to love the number of fascinating things that carry Conways name.

I was searching for an interesting way to generate polyhedra and came across Conway Operators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway_polyhedron_notation

The results can be pretty awesome: http://elfnor.com/conway-polyhedron-operators-in-sverchok.ht... (not my code)

I've got a Unity based "toy" underway utilizing this. I'm currently struggling with adding a UI - mainly because that's the hardest and least interesting aspect of it to me :-(

https://github.com/Ixxy-Open-Source/wythoff-polyhedra

(The base contruction method is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wythoff_construction - the Conway operators are then used to further add complexity. I'm not sure if I can generate all the uniform polyhedra purely using Conway operators...)

Another very interesting notation/mathematical language from John Conway and William Thurston is for talking about symmetry.

Highly recommend The Symmetries of Things:

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1568812205/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?i...

It wasn't entirely clear from the wiki page, but can this notation be used to describe every type of tangled shape, including those such as the twisted proteins folding@home attempts to untangle?

My understanding of knot theory is pretty limited, but very few proteins are topologically different from a straight line—while there are lots of wiggles back and forth, if you pulled really hard on the ends, you would in most cases have no knots in it.

Related video: https://youtu.be/JXGyXtNsu14

Did a little knot theory research in college too. But with Dowker notation.

seriously, is he a polymath.

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