Batman logo in equation form

A Redditor called "i_luv_ur_mom" posted this math teacher's amusement, an equation that draws a lovely Bat-signal.

Do you like Batman? Do you like math? My math teacher is REALLY cool

• [Steve Schnier]

  Brilliant!  That’s the kind of teacher who captures the students’ imaginations and makes a lasting impression on their lives.  I wish there were more teachers like him/her out there.

• [Goldie Knight]

  Wonderful batman, is that a special formular or what?

• [nffcnnr]

  If this guy’s so smart, why didn’t he think of putting it on a larger piece of graph paper?

• [Andrew Singleton]

  Gonna have to agree. We need more teachers like this.

  Query: other than drawing the bat symbol… is it good for anything?

  • [Christopher Rogers]

    It shows that almost everything can be described by the language of maths.

• [unwesen]

  That must be the ultimate nerdgasm: comics and mathematics combined.

• [awjt]

  I = b(a*t)+ma^n

• [anne speck]

  It’s a step-wise polar equation. It probably doesn’t do anything other than make a space in minds which have been learning in the graphs=cartesian coordinates world for other kinds of plotting systems do exist. And why is it important to put it on larger graph paper? Take the formula and plug it into Geogebra and print it out as big as you want.

  • [john aguirre]

    That is a stepwise equation, but it is definitely not polar, it’s Cartesian.  Note that the variables are (x,y), not (r,theta).

• [eaddict]

  My daughter ‘s math class did that last year.  In fact, she did the Batman logo, others did the St Louis Cardinals letter logo, while others did various product logos.   Nice to see other teachers going the creative route.

• [Ambiguity]

  But the function isn’t analytic! I mean, look at those derivatives. Just look at ‘em!

• [Camilo Wartenberg]

  A school in Bogota Colombia did a whole project similar to this earlier this year using the educational math software Cabri and Derive.

  Memorable works include the Metallica logo, Adidas logo, Thundercats logo

  You can view the works in:

  http://proyectosilueta.blogspot.com/p/bocetos.html

• [Camilo Wartenberg]

  Sorry this is a better page to view all the works in the same page:

  http://proyectosilueta.blogspot.com/p/la-propuesta.html

• [Jacob Ewing]

  Ok, that beats my mammary math by a long shot.

• [anne speck]

  @google-6e7df99bb682d2a2604859f86ea75e01:disqus D’oh! You’re right of course — polar would have made for a much cleaner equation. Apologies for my pre-coffee posting. 

• [Joel Phillips]

  sqrt{frac{||x| – 1|}{|x|-1}} is cheating.  

  • [Haakon IV]

    I have discovered a remarkable analytic function representing the bat signal, which this comment is unfortunately to small to contain.

• [omems]

  How long until DC issues a DMCA takedown notification?

• [Leandro M.D.]

  Very good!!

• [Robert Holmén]

  What is the reason for the paper being labeled in units of 1.4?  How is that generally more useful than integers?
   

  • [sarah michel]

    I think it’s probably in units of the square root of two, rather than units of 1.4, which would certainly be somewhat more significant.

• [Chris Brown]

  How long before someone posts a link to wolfram alpha?

  • [hughstimson]

    Are you suggesting Wolfram Alpha could be used to plot that beast? Awesome! And I nominate you sir!

• [kumar mayank]

  can someone type the text so that I can plot on Wolfram Alpha and confirm?

• [Astrid Torregroza]

  http://proyectosilueta.blogspot.com/

• [hypnosifl]

  I don’t think Wolfram Alpha’s equation plotter allows you to plot implicit functions, you’d have to solve for y if you wanted to use it. There’s an applet for implicit functions here, haven’t tried it though.

  • [hypnosifl]

    So for that implicit function applet I linked to, here’s the first of the six big expressions in parentheses, which gives the outer edge of the logo’s wings (set the range on the graph to xmin=-8, xmax=8, and also for ymin and ymax if you don’t want the shape distorted):

    ( ( ((x/7)^2) * sqrt( (abs(abs(x) – 3)) / (abs(x) – 3) ) ) + ( ((y/3)^2) *sqrt( (abs(y + (3*sqrt(33)/7))) / (y + (3*sqrt(33)/7)) ) ) – 1 ) = 0

• [Paul Munro]

  It looks like the Grapher application, in the Applications/Utilities folder of EVERY Macintosh running OS X…

  • [hypnosifl]

    Grapher seems to have a kind of messed up way of handling expressions unless you type in a bunch of parentheses…for example, here are two sample inputs (with the first sqrt[...] being a term from the Batman equation) which give different responses:

    sqrt[abs[abs[x] – 3]/(abs[x] – 3)] + xy = 0 (gives “no valid operation found”)

    sqrt[(abs[abs[x] – 3])/(abs[x] – 3)] + xy = 0 (gives a working graph…only difference is parentheses around “abs[abs[x] – 3]”, shouldn’t the brackets be enough?)Anyway, that gripe aside, I tried taking a version of the equation posted by someone on the reddit thread and fixing it up a little to work in Grapher, Grapher was able to graph the 6 different parts of the equation individually (though with some it gave weird dotted lines at the end):(((x/7)^2)*sqrt[(abs[abs[x] – 3])/(abs[x] – 3)] + ((y/3)^2)*sqrt[(abs[y + (3*sqrt[33])/7])/(y + (3*sqrt[33])/7)] – 1) = 0

    (abs[x/2] – ((3*sqrt[33] – 7)/112)*x^2 – 3 + sqrt[1 - (abs[abs[x] – 2] – 1)^2] – y) =0

    (9*sqrt[(abs[(abs[x] – 1)*(abs[x] – 3/4)])/((1 – abs[x])*(abs[x] – 3/4))] – 8*abs[x] – y) = 0

    (3*abs[x] + (3/4)*sqrt[(abs[(abs[x] – 3/4) (abs[x] – 1/2)])/((3/4 – abs[x])*(abs[x] – 1/2))] – y) = 0

    ((9/4)*sqrt[(abs[(x - 1/2)*(x + 1/2)])/((1/2 – x)*(1/2 + x))] – y) = 0

    ((6*sqrt[10])/7 + (3/2 – abs[x]/2)*sqrt[(abs[abs[x] – 1])/(abs[x] – 1)] – ((6*sqrt[10])/14) *sqrt[4 - (abs[x] – 1)^2 ] – y) = 0

    But when I tried multiplying them together into one giant equation and setting it all equal to zero, Grapher didn’t give an error but it also didn’t show anything on the graph. Maybe it’s too much for it to handle…

• [Hee S. Lee]

  can somebody come up with the equations for wu-tang logo?

• [Jhonny Be Good]

  Guys, the solution to the equation is complex (has imaginary part). The batman figure is one of the real solutions, that is what usually software will plot. The trick is done, for example, by the factor sqrt(abs( abs(x)-3 ) /abs(x)-3 ), that will be imaginary for x3, so the grapher will not be able to plot in the interval x<3, but the solution is still there!