
David Eppstein's Wikipedia Gallery Contributions - vinchuco
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:David_Eppstein/Gallery
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scrooched_moose
LucasVB is another great contributor with some fantastic animations:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:LucasVB/Gallery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:LucasVB/Gallery)

Two personal favorites are:

Line integral of a scalar field:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Line_integral_of_scalar_f...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Line_integral_of_scalar_field.gif)

and Fourier Transform:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fourier_transform_time_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fourier_transform_time_and_frequency_domains.gif)

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pen2l
What software are these folks using to produce these images/animations?

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scrooched_moose
From his tumblr:
[http://1ucasvb.tumblr.com/faq](http://1ucasvb.tumblr.com/faq):

The 3D stuff (with shadows and such) was created using the excellent, free
raytracer POV-Ray.

The rest were created using a custom-made PHP library that uses GD for
graphics. The library adds a whole lot of functionality that isn’t present in
GD or PHP: drawing anything with alpha blending, geometry and math primitives,
2D and 3D rotations (including quaternions), better anti-aliasing, object-
oriented interface, etc.

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davidy123
I find it disappointing that even in the litany of alternate technologies
tried, there's no reference to using Web technologies, so these animations
could be interactive. Obviously the author's choice, but some could benefit
now and going forward.

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sbpayne
I took courses with Eppstein at UCI. I was always impressed with his ability
to construct clear example diagrams to explain any question.

Glad to see some of these great diagrams were shared with a wider audience :)

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allensallinger
He's a legend, I remember in our Graph Algorithm's class our "text book" was
mostly composed of the articles that he had written. Glad to see UCI
representing here.

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kevinwang
The UCI campus ACM club is quite distinguished as well ;)

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underwoodley
No disrespect to those who do original research, however it seems that these
images, made freely available to hundreds and thousands of people seeking to
educate themselves, contribute more to the advancement of human knowledge than
all but the most important published theorems.

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reikonomusha
I’m not sure there’s a point to rank either, but it is certainly true that
research and education are both complementary and monumentally important for
the advancement of knowledge.

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underwoodley
I guess my point is just that the utility of this kind of work seems
undervalued in comparison to people proving endless minor theorems in little-
read papers, which gets romanticized as 'finding out stuff no-one has ever
known before'

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joemi
If not for the research, though, there'd be nothing that needed explaining
through illustration.

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niedzielski
I've commented this before but it's worth mentioning these fantastic
interactive SVGs again:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cmglee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cmglee)
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Burj_Kha...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Burj_Khalifa_floors.svg)

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ahelwer
David Eppstein is a mainstay of WikiProject Computer Science[0]; I encourage
anyone interested in contributing to Wikipedia in that area to refer to the
group for help & support!

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Computer...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Computer_science)

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geokon
I hadn't reflected on it before, but it seems an unintended consequence of
power users like this is that it has created a de facto wikipedia math
illustration "style". Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing

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jgalt212
almost as talented as seedfeeder:

NSFW!!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seedfeeder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seedfeeder)

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infocollector
Beautiful! Thanks for posting.

