Search where?

This Portfolio (cathartes02)

All of Writing.Com

◄ June ► 2022
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	30
Archive				RSS

Offsite Blogs

· Waltz Travel Blog

Create New Item

Read & Review

Community

Browse By Type

Browse By Genre

Writing Resources

Saturday, Nov. 16, 2024

5:08am EST

Members: 671

Guests: 1,666

Total Online: 2,337

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:

Write_Mikey_Write!

a day ago
In response to "Global Domination"

A little girl wearing a Hello Kitty shirt in Middle-of-Nowhere, Siberia will certainly make you wonder how it got there. My grandson has a souvenir t-shirt with a Terex 33-19 "Titan" on it. When it was built in 1973, the Titan was the largest, highest payload capacity truck ever built, a title it held for 25 years. The thing is, the truck on that t-shirt is on display in Sparwood, BC, Canada - over 1000 miles from here, and his mom got the shirt at a local thrift store. Makes me wonder.

Oh, yeah - I thought 'Schrödinger's Hello Kitty' was funny, too.

1 Like

Adherennium Plotting something

a day ago
In response to "Global Domination"

For whatever warped reason, 'Schrödinger's Hello Kitty' has tickled my funny bone.

3 Like

Brandiwyn🎶

Nov 12, 2024 at 10:50am
In response to "Blond Man's Bluff"

That's interesting about the two spellings of blonde. I always thought blonde referred to the person and blond referred to the hair. But I never bothered to look it up, So you've catered to my lazy today.

3 Like

Kåre เลียม Enga

Nov 9, 2024 at 1:02pm
In response to "It Was a Dark and Starry Night"

Ah... but why did he see those swirls when many of us don't? A totally different discussion... out of thin air... which is a frozen fog today when I gaze out the window.

Humans have great skills of observation; some of us extraordinary skills. Is The Scream depictive or evocative? 😱

Turkey DrumStik

Nov 9, 2024 at 11:04am
In response to "It Was a Dark and Starry Night"

Frankly, I'm more surprised to see reasonably good reporting from CNN. I'd given up on their ability to rein in their tendency toward loaded speech.

2 Like

JayNaNoOhNo

Nov 8, 2024 at 12:00pm
In response to "Bungalow Bash"

For the love of God, what did I just read? That is by far the worst use case of a bungalow I've ever seen, and a fundamental misunderstanding of the value of front porches—and the size of bungalows.

Was this his point? Nope, I know what his point was. For a guy so worried about presentation, he certainly undercut his own arguement.

1 Like

Turkey DrumStik

Nov 8, 2024 at 9:47am
In response to "Bungalow Bash"

"People don't change their minds on the internet. They usually do that in books, battlefields, or not at all.

Yeah, that's a little bleak."

Bleak and also inaccurate.

1 Like

Kåre เลียม Enga

Nov 7, 2024 at 10:19pm
In response to "Past and Future Intents"

I must live in the present. In the past I daydreamed a lot... probably to escape the bruises of reality; however, I need to be more aware crossing streets or even how I get out of bed (no rapid movements without thinking of consequences).

I can envision a future more peaceful than the present because this time-and-place isn't the only "present" that's ever existed, and I do try to see the larger view (emphasis on 'try').

1 Like

Lilli 🧿 ☕

Nov 7, 2024 at 10:58am
In response to "Past and Future Intents"

If the aforementioned exercises don't help; there's still liquor.

3 Like

Turkey DrumStik

Nov 6, 2024 at 10:22am
In response to "Lo!"

Not gonna lie I need the holiday season chatter.

June 20, 2022 at 12:05am

#1034016

Lousy Lurks

Another entry for "Journalistic Intentions"

[18+]

Breaking In to Talk

You know, the whole thing about tropes is that while they can be clichés, they aren't usually; they're just storytelling elements. What makes a cliché is something that's overused to the point of losing its impact, which is a very subjective thing. So the whole "person comes home and discovers their antagonist sitting in an armchair brandishing a pistol" thing can still work, even though it gets used a lot, especially if you do something new with it. The Blacklist, for example, does this to great effect -- with the twist that it's almost always the antihero protagonist of the series doing the lurking.

What doesn't work, what has never worked (in my not-so-humble opinion), one version of this trope that doesn't get mentioned on the page, is the jump scare when someone gets in their car and the bad guy suddenly appears from the back seat.

While I don't currently own a car (long story, and I've already covered it here), I guarantee you that if I did and if someone were lurking in the back seat, I'd notice them before I even got into the car. Even assuming I've decluttered it recently (not a safe assumption, by the way), it's literally impossible for me to miss the bulky shape of a human as I'm walking up to the thing, keys in hand. It doesn't matter how dark it is; it's never so dark that you can't at least see the silhouette of a fellow homo sapiens in the back seat. If it ever is that dark, you wouldn't be able to see the goddamned car to open the door. And even if they're lying in the floor well, you'd still see something's off, especially as once you open the door, the frickin light comes on.

If you can't see your enemy sitting in the goddamned back seat, you shouldn't be driving anyway, because your vision sucks.

I can excuse this version of the trope if the vehicle involved is a van or RV, or something else large and with lots of room to hide. Or if the person lurking has some sort of invisibility or shapechanging superpower, in which case, come on, there are other ways for them to jump out at you. Otherwise, you just can't hide a human in the back seat of a car, Border Patrol insistence notwithstanding.

Maybe I've just been conditioned from years of watching movies and shows with the back-seat-hiding jump scare person, so it's become second nature to me to glance into the back seat to ensure no one's lurking there. But every time I see it on a show, whether it's set at night or in the brightest sunshine, it breaks any suspension of disbelief I might have had.

So if you're going to do that, make me believe it. Maybe it's a little person. Maybe they were hiding in the trunk and came in through the rear seats while your attention was on the road. Maybe they do have one of those superpowers.

And if you're doing the standard version where someone comes home to find the bad guy sitting in their favorite armchair in the dark, at least don't telegraph it with scary music.

5 Like • Comment • View 3 comments

© 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/6-20-2022