Nicole's High School Portfolio Blog

(1) how you figured out what equations to use.

I already had knowledge in the many graphs we used during this course and could see when I certain graph would be applicable. After I picked which type of equation I was going to use, I used the rules that come along with certain types of graphs and transformations to get the line where I wanted it. For example, I know that a logarithmic graph will have 2 asymptotes, a vertical and a horizontal one, so when placing my line, I translated by graph by making the x and y values where the line in the original photo was and then playing around to see how it would look after I got it to a general area.

(2) Did you have any challenges?

Yes, I had challenges with figuring out how I was going to make an angled circle in demos and I knew that having several semi-circles or exponential graphs to try and make a circle was going to be a long and tedious process that would make everything very difficult on top of the amount of stuff I have. After some research, I found there was a way to make an ellipse rotated. This saved me so much time and effort and made the entire project look smoother without so many jagged lines from makeshift circles. I was trying to make part of the Papa Smurf’s Beard (the smurf in red in the middle) and found parametric flowers while searching for a solution that could save me time. It ended up not saving anytime and I had a while where I was struggling to make it work but because of where I needed the flower to be and the fact that I had to shade it in was not something I could solve with my knowledge at this time and had to find a new way of going about it. There was the challenge of how much there was to do in terms of what the image was and how to recreate it. It was time and energy consuming to try and push myself through. I think if this wasn’t half as fun as I found it to be then I think I wouldn’t have pushed myself to finish. I think I pushed myself too far and if given this project again I might have chosen a slightly easier image, but regardless I am still very proud of what I have accomplished.

(3) Any aha moments?

I originally was trying to figure out how to do domain in range since I could hover over where the line intersected and see what the point was to restrict it but I didn’t know for a little while how to write while still seeing the number and found I could type without moving my mouse so I could still see the number. I was struggling to figure out how to function notation worked in terms of changing the x value. with how I originally made my equations, I didn’t put in an (x) after the letter out of ease and figured out later on that it was how you changed the x value. it was a big aha moment and honestly it probably shouldn’t have but we figure it out for the better.

(4) Did you get help?

The internet helped a lot with figuring out some more niche functions and ways they could be transformed. it also helped me find how to use rgb and hsv values as well. I had a general understanding with colours but using the internet and photoshop to find the exact colour helped me. the rotated eclipse helped a ton. I found it while trying to figure out how to rotate a circle and it helped me so much.

(5) Did you use any strategies?

Looking and using what I knew about functions and how they work, I was able to predict where a line would end up and then from that point I would just use trial and error to solve for where the line would be. knowing that an exponential or a logarithmic function could create a part of a circle that was cut off or using a mixture of domain and range to get circles restricted on an angle helped get the shapes I wanted.

(6) How did this assignment help you understand more about transformations of functions and relations?

I wasn’t sure how a sin or cos graph look when you played around with it because I really struggled in that unit and how the graphs were supposed to look really helped me understand how a sin graph differed from a cos graph and how it was easier to change a cos graph to get where you wanted vs a sin graph. learning when a graph needed to have 1 or 2 negatives because flipping it sometimes caused it go back to a position I wanted was there when learning reciprocal functions.

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/golhkrokek