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Hilbert's Curve: Is infinite math useful?

3Blue1Brown4 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2017–2024
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explainer · intro · evergreen · 2017–2024 on HN

3Blue1Brown explains space-filling curves and the Hilbert curve, and how infinite mathematical constructions connect to finite, practical approximations. It touches on mapping between dimensions and sensory ideas.

Recommended as the best visual introduction to Hilbert curves, which come up in indexing, image layout and dimensionality mapping.

6 comments from Hacker News

@rhart922017-09 · in “Mathematicians Measure Infinities, Find They’re Equal”

I am not sure if you have heard of them, but space-filling curves are a way to demonstrate this. This is a great video on the Hilbert curve ▶ this video

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@Cieplak2024-01 · in “Visualizing Ext4”

There's a command-line utility called pixd [1] that generates similar data visualizations on the command line. That said, it only shows static representations of binary data and is not nearly as cool as buredoranna's animated gifs showing filesystem changes over time. It can be helpful to plot these sorts of pixel arrangements on a Hilbert curve, rather than plotting pixels line by line. I learned this trick from a Ghidra plugin called cantordust [2]. 3blue1brown offers some mathematical intuition for the effectiveness of a Hilbert curve pixel arrangement [3]. [1] link [2] link [3] ▶ this video

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@91aintprime2020-03 · in “Landmark computer science proof cascades through physics and math”

Hilbert's curve: Is infinite math useful? by 3blue1brown ▶ this video or skip directly to the conclusion; ▶ this video

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@joelg2017-10 · in “My Sudden Synaesthesia”

This is actually exactly the topic of the 3Blue1Brown video on Hilbert Curves: ▶ this video Space-filling curves are a sort of optimal mapping strategy for compressing two dimensions down into one.

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@vankessel2019-08 · in “The Human Brain Can Create Structures in Up to 11 Dimensions”

That sounds like it would be very interesting. And while we can't extend our senses just yet, we may be able to swap them. I'm very curious if anyone has tried to use a space-filling Hilbert curve to transform vision into audio and let their brain adjust to it like suggested in this video ▶ this video