Graphing Me!
The assignment involving creating a caricature of oneself on desmos was an interesting one. At first I believed that creating a character would be extremely simple, but I was soon proven wrong. I needed to apply all aspects of functions, domain, range, and inequalities that I had learned previously. Beginning with my headscarf (hijab), I inputted the equation for a circle and played around with the sliders until I created one of my desired ratio.
This project allowed for me to gain insight into special properties of functions and crazy cases I don’t think I would be able to see in a regular textbook question and work on my own discovery, trial, and error process.
I duplicated and again moved to create multiple layers, finishing with my head in the center. I then easily added some eyebrows by pinpointing coordinates, converting them to lines connecting eachother, and flipping them on the y – axis to create the other eyebrow, from here, however, things got a bit more complicated. Beginning my eyes was a bit of a challenge, I easily added the ovals similar to my hijab but was unsure of how to move them from the origin point. Once I did some trial and error, critical thinking, and plugged in an additional +5 to the equation it moved it 5 upwards on the y – axis and I had found my solution! I added several smaller circles inside my oval to create an iris and pupil and moved onto my nose. My nose turned out to be the creation of an increasingly complicated equation that took me a while to understand. I originally thought I could just have a simple connected coordinates nose but decided I wanted a challenge. Using critical thinking skills I decided to start with the formula of a parabola then added numerous multiplications to the entire equation, raised the equation to the power of a decimal, and added a natural number to move the nose upwards, continuing to play with the sliders. Once I had my desired nose I realized it was equal on both ends and did not look very appealing in my personal opinion, seeing this I used domain to limit the nose length on one side so it appeared to be turned and looked much better. The mouth was an almost repetition but not nearly as complicated as the nose in the sense that I again used a parabola and domain to limit its size. Using this tactic again on my lips. I decided to add some details with simple but impactful coordinate connections that often took an extremely long time to plot with my; eyelashes, necklace, teeth, top of mouth, and bottom part of my scarf. I was also very proud of my detail adding tassels to my scarf which required critical thinking to make sure the proper coordinates were connecting to create the image. I received a bit of assistance from my father during trial and error phases but for pretty much the entire project I was intent on working on my creative and critical thinking skills making the best possible self portrait I could create without someone giving me any answers or handing me an equation. For almost all of my components I used the same strategy of starting off with a base equation, playing with it a bit, and critically thinking about how mathematically it would look depending on what new additions I added. Overall, the project allowed for me to gain insight into special properties of functions and crazy cases I don’t think I would be able to see in a regular textbook question and also allowed for me to really work on my own discovery, trial, and error process that can be a major asset to my comprehension and application of my in class learning.