Looney Labs Icehouse Mailing list Archive

[Icehouse] Pointless Pedantic Pursuit of Proper Pyramid Proportions

  • From"Robert Bryan" <rbryan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • DateMon, 5 Mar 2007 10:53:18 -0700
This post continues the ultimately pointless discussion of larger size
pyramid dimensions which I somewhat knowingly set off in my previous
post.  To those who find such discussions annoying, I offer my apologies
and encourage you to skip the rest of it.  To those who find them
interesting, but disagree with me, please accept my forthcoming outrage
in the good humor with which it is intended. :)

On 3/4/07, Don Sheldon wrote: 
> When you round to the nearest 32nd (which is part of the formula),
they're > dead on.

When you round they're dead on?  I find this both unsurprising and
unsatisfying.  My proposed formula  
 Height = (12x + 20)/32 
 Width  = ( 7x + 11)/32
requires no rounding whatsoever; and produces exactly the correct sizes
for the existing pieces.  

> But that breaks down severely at higher pips and deforms your pyramids
> away from the beauty of the 4:7 ratio.

Severely? It converges on 7:12, which is roughly 2% different from 4:7.
So it would be hard to say 4:7 was aesthetically pleasing but something
between that and 7:12 was not.  For the same reason, you can easily be
forgiven for being lured into the heresy that it's all about the 4:7
ratio.  The 1 and 2 pointers are not 4:7, though they easily could be
were that the mystically desirable ratio. Clearly, it is all about the
steady convergence from 11:20 to 7:12.