# Shoulders of Giants



## Metryq (Jul 21, 2011)

Kepler's labors at producing his laws of planetary motion would have been significantly diminished with mathematical tools invented after his death. "Work smarter, not harder" is an adage that would have saved folk hero John Henry considerable grief.

There's no glory in doing math long-hand, and using a computer is not "cheating." The user must still know what he is doing when inputting numbers, and must know what to do with the result. And so interface designer Bret Victor has been working on tools to make complex math more usable:

*Ex-Apple Designer Creates Teaching UI That "Kills Math" Using Data Viz*

This visualization of complex math reminds me of the BIAC computer James P. Hogan described in _The Genesis Machine_.


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