Ah, no, Buffon’s needle refers to the estimation of pi using a set of parallel lines, not a square.
- Buffon’s needles is about throwing needles on your parquet to compute \pi.
- The \pi Monte Carlo algorithm is about playing darts…
Please don’t throw darts on your parquet! 
It’s a very bad method to compute \pi…
This reminds me of a warning seen on a Canon L-class lens metal case. “Do not stand on top of the lens case. You may fall and injure yourself.”
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True, if you want to achieve a modest accuracy of, say, 10**(-7), then you will have to have patience. Personally, I would consult a mathematical handbook instead.
We can, however, combine e and pi, here, in a real way, instead of using Euler’s formula (e**i pi) = -1):
- Put the lines at a distance equal to the length of the needles
- Throw a needle and move one end to the first line - preserving its orientation
- Throw another needle and move it to the other point of the first needle, again keeping its orientation
- Continue this until the you cross the second line
- Each time record if the needle originally touched a line
This is a ridiculous method to estimate both pi and e
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Hiroshi Kawano, KD 52, from the series “Artificial Mondrian”, 1969, painting after computer-generated design ; computer: HITAC 5020; programming language: FORTRAN 4; gouache on paper, 71,4 x 50 cm, ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
Other Artificial Mondrian:
https://www.qwant.com/?client=brz-moz&q="Artificial+Mondrian"&t=images
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The compArt database Digital Art (daDA) is a growing repository on digital art.
There is a beautiful collection of digital art made with Fortran, mainly in the 60’s and 70’s:
http://dada.compart-bremen.de/search?query=fortran
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Fortran (maybe FORTRAN?) used for the engraving of music
Some days ago, the Muse Group (you might know musescore, an engraving program) announced to acquire rights on audacity. I heard about this from this site, which includes a video clip by Martin Keary / Tantacrul about audacity’s background and possible extensions (e.g., interactive 3D spectrograms, around t = 13:20 mn:ss)
Intrigued by this I was browsing a little on the author’s youtube channel, and found one report where he describes a little his earlier contribution to a new font to the musescore engraving program mentioned earlier. To my surprise this second video compares musescore with one of the references he takes for the visual output: the (now no longer developed) program score by Leland Smith, a program relying on Fortran and (for long) used by some of the bigger publishers of music.
The interval between t = 2:15 mn:ss and 7:07 mn:ss sheds some light on said program, a story at some points similar to D. E. Knuth and TeX for example when it comes to the programmer’s intended output quality when printing became electronic, or the sequential build of glyphs, measures, and eventually, sheets of music.
In difference to DEK, however, Leland did not as much engage with others interested to develop the program further so that «score», regardless of its use, is considered abandonware.
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And at exactly 3:13, you can see our “F” Fortran logo:
https://youtu.be/XGo4PJd1lng?t=193
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I didn’t know «HapHaixon» were you (because of this authorship encountered frequently). One of the surprising elements was just to see Fortran being used for a non-engineering construction, even if recognizing (and eventually, programmatic applying) of rules and concepts in music is not new (e.g., GTTM).
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A Fortran code can be seen here:
https://po-ex.net/taxonomia/materialidades/digitais/pedro-barbosa-e-azevedo-machado-permuta/
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Maybe we can use this character as the “mascot” of Fortran (like Gopher for Go)
but we may be in a big trouble with Nintendo…
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Not sure who made this graphic but NAG used it in the early 90s.
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Fortrans is a medication. Happily there is an “s”, so that search engines will not show it too often when searching “Fortran”. I let you discover the usage:
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Inspired in part by a 1967 lecture by pioneering computer musician Pierre Barbaud, Mohr soon began experimenting with the programming language FORTRAN IV, which allowed him to subject forms to automated transformations and randomize their appearance.
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Just this past week I was able to get this to run with only light editing, using Approximatrix Simply Fortran 3.
Now that I have some experience in generating output, I would love to discuss this with someone knowledgeable in Fortran to possibly collaborate on updating the code to a more modern version.
Welcome to the forum. Which program are you referring to?
Thank you.
I was referring to the Xenakis Free Stochastic Music program.
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Great!
If it generates notes, you could use my small ForMIDI project:
If it generates acoustic waves:
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Thanks. I’ll check these out.
The Xenakis program is specific to his music and is part of a research project I’m working on, so I plan to continue working with that.
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