Comments

Very nice and Escher-esque.

I can see the appeal both then and now.

Looks like you were trying to solve the tromino tiling problem in the upper-left corner of the first scan. I'm curious as to whether you knew of the problem, or it was just a coincidence.

FWIW, a more comprehensive discussion of the problem is available here as a PowerPoint file.

Patterns like these are traditionally drawn in India in courtyards outside a home. My mom still religiously draws it every morning outside our home.

It's called Rangoli, or Kolam in South India. They are usually drawn using a white powder, but special occasions call for particularly elaborate and colorful patterns.

http://www.i-kolam.com/
http://www.kamat.com/kalranga/art/rangoli.htm

Thanks for putting up scans of the graph paper -- it's cool that you still have it!

Would it be too much to ask if you could publish the python program you wrote for the computer-drawn images?

-K

Brian: I wasn't trying to solve the tromino problem, I was interested in rep-tiles (http://math.wcupa.edu/~nitica/webreptiles/reptiles.html), whereby a number of similar tiles could be grouped together to make a larger version of the tile.