Daily Desmos 64b (Basic) + A short rant about beauty

Creator

Michael Pershan (@mpreshan)

Difficulty

Basic

On to the Challenge!

Here’s a claim: mathematicians care too much about beauty. Yeah, beautiful things are pretty awesome. But there’s just as much that’s awesome about ugly things.

Or, more to the point, beauty isn’t just external. We regularly recognize this in our own lives — probably because so many of us aren’t beautiful in that sense — but we regularly fail to recognize this in math. Instead we trumpet symmetry, harmony between parts, attractiveness to the eye, while completely ignoring other qualities.

The parabola is the over-groomed star of the mathematical world.

Now, this graph, I claim, is not attractive.

But this unattractive graph has depth. It’s modest, and generous in its sensibilities. It has a lot to give and demands very little.

See if you can find an equation for this lopsided guy on desmos.com.