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Re:Accelerate Python code by importing Taichi by astroalex on Thursday September 08, 2022 @07:01PM (#32773212)
I'm interested in understanding this comment but I don't know where to start. I love the way Reaction Diffusion simulations look and I've coded it up a few times. But I don't understand what you mean by "species vs time". (Some of the other technical language seems more Google-able, but "species vs time" isn't turning up anything obvious.)
Re:Accelerate Python code by importing Taichi by soVeryTired on Thursday September 08, 2022 @07:18PM (#32773351)
I think GP is referring to the heat equation. "species" is the concentration of the "stuff" that you're describing mathematically. Call that u(x), where is a spatial coordinate and u is a real valued function.

Then the diffusive part says

du(x, t)/dt = \nabla_x u(x, t).

The \nabla term is the laplacian: a multivariate form of the second derivative.

The equation says that a short time from now, u(x, t) will change in proportion to the average value of u, calculated over a small ball surrounding the point x, minus the value of u at the point x itself.

If there's less "stuff" in the points that neighbour x than at x itself, the function will decrease over time. Similarly if there's more stuff at the neighbours of x, u(x, t) will increase. This is the basis of diffusive behaviour.

(Edit: I think the equation in the article is wrong, unless I've misunderstood something: they have a delta (first derivative) when they should have a nabla (laplacian))

Re:Accelerate Python code by importing Taichi by xkevio on Thursday September 08, 2022 @08:15PM (#32773788)
I think you might have gotten your symbols mixed up a litte.

From what I understand, just \nabla(f) describes the gradient of a function f -- meaning all the first order partial derivatives (of a certain point) in a vector.

\nabla * f describes the divergence of the function f -- meaning a scalar field of the quantity of the vector field's sources at each point.

\nabla * \nabla(f), divergence of gradient, then describes the Laplace operator. Also written as \nabla^2(f) or \Delta(f) -- note that it's an uppercase delta.

Re:Accelerate Python code by importing Taichi by soVeryTired on Friday September 09, 2022 @05:37AM (#32777253)
You’re absolutely right - how embarrassing! It’s been a few years since I’ve touched this stuff.
Re:Accelerate Python code by importing Taichi by jesuslop on Friday September 09, 2022 @08:26AM (#32778282)
Glitch apart, thanks for expanding, that was what I meant.
Re:Accelerate Python code by importing Taichi by qorrect on Friday September 09, 2022 @09:26AM (#32778928)
How can I get these \nabla s to render, is there a plugin or something ?
Re:Accelerate Python code by importing Taichi by xkevio on Friday September 09, 2022 @06:31PM (#32785683)
HN doesn't support LaTeX in comments sadly, so I am just writing it out as you would before rendering it with LaTeX.

Maybe there are add-ons that detect valid LaTeX math symbols and convert them whenever possible but as-is you can't get it to render within the comments.

Re:Accelerate Python code by importing Taichi by soVeryTired on Friday September 09, 2022 @07:31PM (#32786122)
Yeah, it’s a brain-render unfortunately. Once you’ve written enough latex you work pretty comfortably with just the text for communication.