1. 准备开张了

作者：nccb

原帖地址：http://sinepost.wordpress.com

 

1. Ready to Launch

This blog will primarily be about mathematics and computing: using computing to learn and apply mathematics. Both of these subjects suffer (to differing extents) from mis-perceptions, so let’s start by trying to clarify a few things.

这个博客主要是数学和计算：使用电脑来学习和应用数学。这些科目都遭受错误的看法（不同程度），让我们开始试图澄清一些事情。

Mathematics is often confused with arithmetic (which is onlya small part of mathematics). When thinking of maths, many people imagine numbers and figures: 6 + 7, the 9-times-table, and so on. The ability to do numeric calculations in your head is somewhat handy, but this is the 21st century: the calculator app on your phone can add and multiply numbers more reliably than you can. Arithmetic is dull and easily automated. Much more interesting, and more useful, are the steps before you get to the calculator. Understanding and using the concepts and rules is the interesting part of maths:knowingwhat to calculate is key, not the actual calculation. (NB: North American readers will have to live with my funny-looking abbreviation of math.)

数学经常和算术运算混淆（算数仅仅是数学的一小部分）。当提到数学时，许多人想象的是数字和数据：6+7，九九乘法表，等等。依靠人脑进行的数值计算能力虽然灵活方便，但这是21世纪：用手机上的计算器程序进行加减乘除比你自己运算更可靠。算术计算是枯燥和容易自动化的，而更有趣更实用的则是计算的步骤。理解和使用概念及规则是数学的有趣之处：关键是要知道怎样计算，而不是实际的计算结果。

Meanwhile, computing is often confused with IT, system administration or computer repair. Understandably, people who have no experience of computing (because it almost died out in schools) confuse it with what they know to be useful computer skills: fixing the wireless connection, or operating a spreadsheet. But computing is not about using computers;computing is not about using Google, it’s aboutmaking Google: how do you create a searchable index of the web that can be queried by a huge network of machines in milliseconds, and how do you decide which page is likely to be the most relevant result? Those are the kinds of interesting problems that you can tackle in computing.

 

同时，计算机信息处理技术往往与IT，系统管理人员或电脑维修等概念相混淆。这也难怪，没有计算机信息处理体验（大部分学校不重视）的人认为计算机信息处理就是所谓有用的计算机技能：修复无线连接，或操作电子表格等。但计算机信息处理技术不是关于如何使用计算机的;它也不是指如何使用谷歌浏览器，它却涉及到如何设计谷歌浏览器：你如何来创建网站索引以便在毫秒级内满足庞大的网络搜索需求，以及如何决定哪些页面是可能是最相关的结果？这些都是可以通过计算机信息处理来解决的各种有趣的问题。

The whole point of this blog is to find some useful areas of overlap between maths and computing, and try to explain some of the points where they cross: I anticipate covering geometry, mechanics (in the physics sense: motion and forces), and probably some probability and statistics too. This blog is for:

• Those who struggle to see the relevance and practical application of mathematics,
• Those who know some computing, but struggle with maths (you are not a small group!), and
• Those who want to accomplish mathematical tasks in their programs, especially geometry: moving at angle, collision detection and so on.

本博客的主旨是要找到一些关于数学和计算机信息处理技术之间的重叠领域，并试图解释它们之间的一些交叉点：预计将包括几何学，力学（物理意义上的运动和力），以及一些概率和统计方面的内容。这个博客面向的是：

• 那些很难看到数学的现实意义和实际应用的人，
• 那些知道一些计算，但与与数学在斗争的人（这是一个很大的群体），以及
• 那些想要在程序中完成数学工作，特别是几何方面：特定角度的移动，碰撞检测等的人。

I’ll primarily be usingGreenfoot for coding my examples, because developing Greenfoot is my day job — but the principles can always be applied in other 2D frameworks such as Scratch, etc.

因为开发Greenfoot是我的日常工作，所以我将主要使用Greenfoot来编写自己的例子，但是涉及的原理也能够应用于其他2D程序框架下，比如Scratch等等。

PS：各示例源码除了可在相关帖子给出的链接中下载，还可以在此统一下载：http://download.csdn.net/download/qianer/5709485