[Edu-sig] Another idea of Conway

[Gregor Lingl]

Maria Droujkova schrieb:
> This language looks like a lot of fun. Especially given the fact none
> of students coming to me for the first time (or their parents) can't
> typically find any use of fractions beyond cooking, if that. Are there
> some beginner, hands-on/visual or otherwise "more accessible" examples
> for it? What fun!
>
>   
Unfortunately I don't know of any. There is a chapter on Fractran in

Julian Havil: Nonplussed!: Mathematical Proof of Implausible Ideas
http://www.amazon.com/Nonplussed-Mathematical-Proof-Implausible-Ideas/dp/0691120560 


It contains a nice proof of the fact that that 'fractran-program' 
calculates exactly the primes.
Although perhaps "more accessible" it still assumes some computer 
science background.

And, yes, it's fun. But as it happens so often with fun, it's useless - 
in contrast to cooking ;-)   ,
which may be fun also, though.

You have to calculate 281 integers to arrive at 32, which delivers the 
prime 5 and
710 integers to arrive at the next prime: 7

Best wishes
Gregor

P.S.: I like your homepage. Think I should register to find out more
about what it's all about.

> Cheers,
> Maria Droujkova
> http://www.naturalmath.com
>
> Make math your own, to make your own math.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 8:08 AM, Gregor Lingl <gregor.lingl at aon.at> wrote:
>   
>> Although my posting to this list seems to tend to become
>> a somewhat autistic activity I'd like to reveal the 'mystery'
>> behind the script below:
>>
>> http://esolangs.org/wiki/Fractran
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRACTRAN
>>
>> Would writing a fractran interpreter in python be an interesting
>> project for teaching CS? (My first try below allows for a lot of
>> optimizations, e.g. not to use Fraction but resort to (long) ints.)
>>
>> Best wishes,
>> Gregor
>>
>> Gregor Lingl schrieb:
>>     
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> on vacation in the Tyrolean Alps one evening
>>> I've found the time to implement another (I assume
>>> less well known) idea of John Conway.
>>>
>>> Just for fun.
>>>
>>> from fractions import Fraction
>>>
>>> fracs = [Fraction(f) for f in
>>>  "17/91 78/85 19/51 23/38 29/33 77/29 95/23 77/19 1/17 11/13 13/11 15/14
>>> 15/2 55/1".split()]
>>>
>>> def fracgame():
>>>   z = Fraction(2,1)
>>>   while True:
>>>       for f in fracs:
>>>           n = z * f
>>>           if n.denominator == 1:
>>>               break
>>>       yield int(n)
>>>       z = n
>>>
>>> def pow2(z):
>>>   n = 0
>>>   while z % 2 == 0:
>>>       n += 1
>>>       z //= 2
>>>   return (z == 1) * n
>>>  def what():
>>>   fg = fracgame()
>>>   while True:
>>>       z = next(fg)
>>>       n = pow2(z)
>>>       if n != 0:
>>>           yield n
>>>
>>> what = what()
>>> print(next(what))
>>> print(next(what))
>>>
>>> # the following will take 1 or 2 minutes
>>>
>>> ##w = 0 ##while w < 100:
>>> ##    w = next(what)
>>> ##    print(w)
>>>
>>> Comments or discussion may follow when
>>> I'm back to Vienna.
>>>
>>> All the best,
>>> Gregor
>>>
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