Search where?

This Portfolio (cathartes02)

All of Writing.Com

◄ February ► 2020
S	M	T	W	T	F	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
Archive				RSS

Offsite Blogs

· Waltz Travel Blog

Create New Item

Read & Review

Community

Browse By Type

Browse By Genre

Writing Resources

Friday, Nov. 1, 2024

4:28am EDT

Members: 650

Guests: 10,033

Total Online: 10,683

Complex Numbers

by Robert Waltz

Rated: 18+ · Book · Personal · #1196512

Not for the faint of art.

Complex Numbers

A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number.

The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi.

Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary.

Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty.

http://www.ddewey.net/mandelbrot/

Signature for Honorable Mentions in 2018 Quill Awards

A signature for exclusive use of winners at the 2019 Quill Awards

Signature for those who have won a Quill Award at the 2020 Quill Awards

Show Recent Comments

10 Most Recent Blog Comments:

tj: Tenebrous Jekyll

about 11 hours ago
In response to "Phases"

Perhaps, if the full moon drives one to madness, the half moon will only make one half-crazy.

1 Like

Battywyn🎶

Oct 29, 2024 at 12:18pm
In response to "The Numbers Don't Lie"

I hear ya. I like to think I'm discerning enough to detect fakes, but that might just be my ego talking. When it comes to local businesses, I also go to social media and request recommendations. With both reviews from strangers and recommendations from friends, I give more credence when more (anecdotal, heh) details are provided. It's more an art than science, but liars either have such flawless details that their story sounds fabricated, or they get embarrassed when they trip themselves up. Truthtellers make errors, because memories are fallible, but they get more confused than embarrassed. Ultimately, the only way to really know is to try the product/service yourself. Which is why you'll hear about my Cancun vacation next month, but you don't have to believe me.

1 Like

Robert Waltz

Oct 29, 2024 at 11:07am
In response to "The Numbers Don't Lie"

Battywyn🎶

- I, too, look at the 1-star reviews, though again, reviews aren't my sole criteria. But sometimes it's blatant fake reviewing from the competition: "Don't stay here! It has rats, bedbugs, and roaches! Stay at this other place instead!" where "this other place" is clearly owned by the reviewer.

On the other paw, five-star reviews are often salted by the establishment in question.

Used to be, you could look at the four- and two- star reviews to get more honest, nuanced opinions, but the establishments, and their competition, have figured out that trick.

Which is one reason why reviews aren't my sole criteria.

(None of this applies to WDC reviews, or to the artificially inflated Uber rating system)

Battywyn🎶

Oct 29, 2024 at 11:00am
In response to "The Numbers Don't Lie"

And I was going to conclude by saying, when evaluating Caribbean vacation destinations, even if 5,000 people gave it a 4.8 rating, if the one star reviews were from seven people who encountered rats in their rooms, I'm very likely to not choose this destination.

2 Like

Battywyn🎶

Oct 29, 2024 at 10:58am
In response to "The Numbers Don't Lie"

Well, that was annoying. I was still in the process of editing, so please excuse the multitude of errors. I also intended to italicize the quotes from your post. Stupid f****** Parkinson's.

1 Like

Battywyn🎶

Oct 29, 2024 at 10:56am
In response to "The Numbers Don't Lie"

You know what sometimes lies? Anecdotes.

Also, dogs, I've heard.

Oh, hell no.

🤣 I love a good inside joke, but my marketing guru would tell you to cross link here

The fallacy is named after Robert McNamara, the U.S. Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War, where his over-reliance on measurable data led to several misguided strategies

Bet he's proud of his claim to fame.

What's the point in data, then?

The point in data is a decimal separator, unless here in non-english speaking countries, in which case it's more likely a thousands separator.

So, whenever I'm evaluating online reviews for pretty much anything, and for the record I check them for almost everything - I always consider three things: 1. The average rating (eg, number of stars); 2. The The number of contributors to the rating; and three. What the one star ratings say.

1 Like

Annette

Oct 28, 2024 at 2:47pm
In response to "Waste Not"

In Southern California, every single family residence has a green bin. Every trash day, three different trucks make the rounds.

1 for composting
1 for recycling
1 for garbage

Trader Joe's sells almost exclusively packaged foods, even perishables. They have contracts with college food pantries. In many colleges, there are now pantries that are open to the students 4 or 5 days a week plus 1 day when people from the community can drive up and receive a bag with a mix of fresh fruits and vegetables along with non-perishable foods and donated sundries.

Churches are huge food redistribution centers also.

The "too hard to set up" systems have created good jobs here. Instead of seeing food donations as a liability, they have created a supervised and refrigerated second market.

The cost for employees is small because, of course, many of the positions are volunteers. But the supervisors and some of the staff are full time employees with benefits.

The article has thrown up obstacles that are easy to overcome.

3 Like

AnotherDreamer

Oct 28, 2024 at 11:33am
In response to "Waste Not"

https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6156cebc4c605e281289a232/6156cebc4c605eb8bc89... e%20for%20beginners%2024%2009%2018.pdf

1 Like

Robert Waltz

Oct 28, 2024 at 11:33am
In response to "Waste Not"

AnotherDreamer

- Hey, it's a replicator from Star Trek!

Now let's invent the holodeck.

2 Like

AnotherDreamer

Oct 28, 2024 at 11:27am
In response to "Waste Not"

We the people of the world could use those products before they are compost as free sources for 3D printed foods that could be used for emergency food, or if tasty enough, re sold.https://builtin.com/articles/3d-printed-food

2 Like

February 11, 2020 at 12:04am

#975252

Terrible Lizards

Anyone ever play the game with Google Translate where you put in something in English to translate to, say, Latin - and then put in the Latin to translate back to English?

The results are sometimes hilarious, and often incomprehensible. Or both.

For example, I put in "These are the times that try men's souls." The Latin it returned was: "Haec tempora quaerunt animas." Okay, my Latin is rustier than an old barge, but that seems about right. But then I put "Haec tempora quaerunt animas" into the source and asked for English.

I got, "This is the time to destroy."

Language, as I'm rediscovering while learning French, isn't usually a one-to-one correspondence of concepts. I mean, I've known this for a long time, but there's a difference between knowing and applying. Like, it's well-known that whereas in English you might say "I'm 33 years old," in French you say something like "I have 33 years." Same idea, different modes of expression, though in that particular example it's pretty easy to tell what is meant.

While comparative linguistics has been interesting to me for a long time, I've usually been too lazy to do more than scratch the surface of other languages. Still, articles like this one usually catch my eye:

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200116-what-happens-when-you-have-no-word-f...

What happens if you have no word for 'dinosaur'
English is the world’s dominant scientific language, yet it has no word for the distinctive smell of cockroaches. What happens though, if you have no words for basic scientific terms?

I'm not going to do my usual copy/paste of segments; I'd pretty much have to reformat a lot of words, and I just can't be arsed. But I do have a couple of general comments.

First, comparative linguistics aside, the development of an individual language is interesting in itself. Famously, English isn't shy about borrowing words from other languages, which may be one reason it's so versatile (but also one reason why it sometimes doesn't make any objective sense). In addition to simple words, like "tattoo" (from the Samoan language, apparently), we've adapted countless terms, scientific or otherwise, from ancient languages like Latin or Greek. If a concept comes along and we don't have a word for it, chances are someone will coin something with an ancient-language base; "television," for example. And then we make it our own; in the US by saying "TV," and in England by saying "telly."

Second, these concepts are coming at us fast and hard. Some inventions require their own names. Something like "starship" was easy; it compounds two simple words from English itself. But then someone invented the transistor, and, more importantly, called it the "transistor" instead of something that I can't even imagine being built up from Anglo-Saxon words. Smallswitch, maybe? But that doesn't really convey all the uses of the transistor, which also relies on other concepts the precursors of the English couldn't have known, such as electricity, electrical current, conductivity, electrical resistance, amplification, and so on. German is much better at mashing words together to make new words.

Point is, to get back to what the article was saying, we invented the word "dinosaur" from ancient languages, languages without that symbol-concept, but the original meaning is largely irrelevant to what we think of when we think "dinosaur." So other languages have, at least, two options: they can just borrow the word like English might, at which point you have someone speaking, I dunno, the Navajo language and you can clearly hear the word "dinosaur;" or you can, as the article suggests, come up with an entirely new word for the concept based on words your language already has.

Like I said, I find the whole thing fascinating, and I sometimes wish I had the time and energy to learn even more languages to feel for myself the baffling complexity of the human capacity to assign sound-symbols to concepts.

4 Like • Comment

© Copyright 2024 Robert Waltz (UN: cathartes02 at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
Robert Waltz has granted Writing.Com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work.

Printed from https://writing.com/main/profile/blog/cathartes02/day/2-11-2020