“Math isn’t just the regurgitation of formulas. “We believe that the line between math, arts and humanities is a lot blurrier than what most people make it out to be,” says Luberoff. It boasts a growing fanbase of students who share their artwork and tips for creating them in online forums on Discord and Reddit. Since it launched in 2011, the company’s online graphing calculator has been used to create everything from Valentine’s Day “Math-o-grams” to Picasso paintings. The others were evaluated based on visual details and creative use of math formulas and animation features.ĭesmos is no stranger to beautiful doodles. “We got some Disney characters,” he shares, which were disqualified.
There was one rule that helped winnow it down: Submissions couldn’t include recognizably copyrighted material. Narrowing the field was “amazingly difficult,” says Eli Luberoff, CEO and co-founder of Desmos. The team selected 60 finalists across three age groups (13-14, 15-16, 17-18) in May, and yesterday announced the winners and runner-ups in each age group. In less than two months, Desmos received submissions from more than 4,000 students from over 100 countries and territories.
While usually associated with frightening snakes, “Medusa is a complex character, and I wanted to show that you shouldn’t judge people by preconceived notions or by the single story you hear.” Her submission, titled, “Victim Turned Villain,” is intended to “be a teaching moment,” she says. Kanaley also wanted to use the competition to pose a challenge of her own. She estimated she spent about five hours every day for a month to finish. Kanaley said she taught herself new trigonomic functions to rotate parabolas and make ovals for the drawing. Graphing the wavy curves of the hair and snakes was itself a learning curve. Grace Kanaley, a sophomore at Huntington Beach High School in southern California, submitted a drawing of Medusa, inspired by her interest in Greek mythology and math. Desmos art contest submissions: “Desmos Bar” by Ezra Oppenheimer (left) and “Victim Turned Villain” by Grace Kanaley (right) “It’s wildly outside what most students get exposed to in school,” says von Oy. These aren’t concepts found in most high-school math textbooks. Another student used Python to program Fourier Transform functions to animate a flower. “We see 13, 14-year-olds going online and asking their peers to learn about things that are beyond what they’d normally learn in class.”įor instance, the “Starry Night” recreation was done using Bézier curves, a technique often used in computer graphics. “Looking at these projects, it’s clear that some kids have been so motivated to make beautiful graphs that they’re going out to learn math that most kids don’t learn until college,” says von Oy. But what students submitted were anything but. “It’s been impressive to see students create true masterpieces,” says Suzanne von Oy, a graphing specialist at Desmos, the company that organized the contest.Īnnounced on March 6, the competition challenged students to create any artwork of their choice using the company’s online graphing calculator.
#Desmos graphing picture project professional
Another is a recreation of Vincent Van Gogh’s famous “Starry Night.” Others could pass for postcards of the iconic Hong Kong skyline or the Eiffel Tower.īut these aren’t professional animators or graphic artists. One entry looks like an animation straight from a video game. Contestants must use a graphing calculator and “draw” every line, curve, shade and highlight with an equation. It’s an art competition unlike most others.
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