Search where?

This Portfolio (cathartes02)

All of Writing.Com

◄ January ► 2021
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
31
Archive				RSS

Offsite Blogs

· Waltz Travel Blog

Create New Item

Read & Review

Community

Browse By Type

Browse By Genre

Writing Resources

Wednesday, Apr. 24, 2024

10:08pm EDT

Members: 920

Guests: 4,891

Total Online: 5,811

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:

Aiva Raine

about 6 hours ago
In response to "Tipped Out"

Agreed. I'll tip and well, for actual waitstaff at restaurants. I'll tip appropriately for bell-staff who assists with luggage at hotels, the more luggage, the bigger the tip. I'll give a tip to the valet as well. Beyond that- I don't tip. Certainly no tip for the fast food workers, coffee baristas, grocery store clerks, etc.

It annoys me to no end that we're being asked to tip for all kinds of jobs where they are being paid an hourly wage. I've worked as a waitress when I was young and my daughter currently does. In those jobs- she absolutely depends upon proper tipping to make a decent wage. And I hate the fact that she is dependent upon tips to do so.

It leaves women especially at the mercy of arsh**() on whether she wants to accept hostile, negative, sexist, harassing, demeaning, and negative behavior from her customers in order to make a living. It condones people treating their waitstaff like shite in order to get paid. While there is much improvement from the 30 years ago when I was working as a waitress in the skimpy outfits we were forced to wear- it's still an issue at non-chain, independent owned restaurants and diners.

Women are left to the mercies of jerk customers and their only recourse is the manager who they have to hope supports their waitstaff rather than the jerk customer. Tipping should be eliminated. All employees should be paid a livable wage and waitstaff especially should not be dependent upon tolerating crappy to obscene behavior from customers in order to make a living.

But, until that happens- I always tip at least 20% and often times more. Very rarely have I tipped lower and the service in those situations was abysmal and they still got 10%.

1 Like

GeminiGem of House Lannister

a day ago
In response to "Going to the Dogs"

I don't understand the intersection, either. I lived in a much smaller city and found that having dogs was a hassle (although it didn't stop me), what with the complainey neighbors, the extra licensing, etc. I live in a rural location now and it works great. I can't wrap my head around living in NYC with or without a dog, although I like the idea of a place that issues a canine and supplies upon moving there. Can that please be a thing?

1 Like

Lazy Writer est 4/24/2008

a day ago
In response to "Going to the Dogs"

I love my little dog...but I live in a biggish house with a fenced backyard.

1 Like

Aennaytte: Free & Wild in GoT

a day ago
In response to "That's Cole"

I knew and ate Kohlrabi before I ever heard of kale. Kohlrabi is so much better in every way.

That last quoted sentence is hilarious. I am glad that I wasn't bred to be a Brussels Sprout.

1 Like

Aennaytte: Free & Wild in GoT

a day ago
In response to "Cash Stash"

The discussion of money is an interesting one. Remember the recent collapse of a few banks? I think it was about a year or so ago?
Yes, deposits were FDIC insured up to $250,000 per depositor. But some people and companies had more money in that bank than the FDIC was insuring.
I never followed up on what happened to those people. I don't run in circles of people who own that much cash.

My accounting professor took half a period to explain to us what happened and how the bank went from Silicone Valley darling to dead so fast.

He also told us that the value we give money is not backed by anything except our hope and faith that our economy will keep going.

We didn't discuss whether the value of money needed a lower income class of people.

1 Like

Aennaytte: Free & Wild in GoT

a day ago
In response to "Revisited: "Hack This""

In my last psychology class, we discussed the evolution of the brain. It is now settled science that we evolved to have not only larger, but also vastly more powerful brains than most other animals because we learned how to cook (process) our food.
Although we are only about 1/4 to 1/3 of a normal gorilla, we eat half of the calories in a day. Not only that, we prepare the food in a way that we get to use more of the calories that we ingest.
The result is that our brain takes up more space in our noggin than a gorilla brain takes up in his noggin. Not only that, each of our brain cells is smaller, so we can fit exponentially more of those into our head.

Now, using all that goodness ...

1 Like

Aennaytte: Free & Wild in GoT

a day ago
In response to "Hope for Hops"

Wait! Why are beer and coffee affected by climate change? That wasn't supposed to happen. All we had to do was have a boat by the side of the house for when the sea levels rise and beg our property insurance to cover fire damage. How are we supposed to remember all of that if we don't get coffee to wake us up in the morning so that we can think and beer at night to dull our sense of doom?

Aennaytte: Free & Wild in GoT

a day ago
In response to "Going to the Dogs"

I have never been to New York, but it seems that my assessment years ago that Berlin, Germany and New York have some similarities. Both cities are known for being inhabited by rude people. And both places, as I now found out, are dog obsessed. And they have high rents.
Berliners though, have a habit of letting their dogs run off leash. Maybe New York is a little better than Berlin in that regard.

1 Like

Robert Waltz

Apr 21, 2024 at 1:48pm
In response to "Revisited: "Hack This""

Wordsmitty ✍️, far be it from me to speculate on the motivations of space aliens, but why in Xenu's name would they do such a thing to the universe?

1 Like

Wordsmitty ✍️

Apr 21, 2024 at 1:39pm
In response to "Revisited: "Hack This""

I thought humans got bigger brains because extraterrestrials affected our evolution, and we eat processed chicken and eggs.

1 Like

January 19, 2021 at 12:01am

#1002398

Where We're Going, We Don't Need Plans

PROMPT January 19th

Do you like things to be carefully planned or do you prefer to just go with the flow? Do you get upset easily when your plans change unexpectedly or for reasons beyond your control? Imagine you are taking a road trip - how much of the trip do you plan in advance?

Oh yes, please, by all means, make me imagine doing one of my favorite activities during a time when I effectively can't. That won't irritate me in the slightest.

/sarcasm

I mean, sure, I could take a road trip. Technically, there's nothing stopping me from getting in the car and driving. It's just that a lot of the reasons for me to take a trip -- restaurants, bars, and breweries -- are closed, have limited hours, are outdoor-only and it's winter, or are simply a Bad Idea during a pandemic. So there's not much point.

Anyway, I'm predicting that not too many people are on either extreme of the planning/pantsing scale where this is concerned. Like most things, it's a spectrum, and most people fall somewhere in the middle.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to plan everything down to the last minute. You get traffic jams, unexpected detours, closures, squirrels (meaning, like, you're concentrating on doing something and then you see something shiny and you're like Dug the dog from Up going, "SQUIRREL!"), etc. It's equally unlikely to be able to have no plans whatsoever; at a bare minimum, your plan is, "I'm just going to tag along with this other person and do whatever they want to do." I mean, sure, technically maybe it's possible to get on the road and choose a path at random whenever you get to an intersection, but even planning to do that is a plan of sorts.

I haven't done that, exactly (though now that I think of it I might have to try it sometime), but one of my favorite ways to take a road trip is to choose a destination literally at random - I once found a site that would generate random coordinates, though I suspect it's based on latitude/longitude, which makes destinations toward the poles somewhat more likely than destinations toward the equator (think about it - it's because lines of longitude converge, so you have a denser array of possible points in, say, Canada than you do in, for instance, Mexico, while on the flip side, there's literally nowhere to actually go in Canada once you get out of southern Ontario).

So it's not as random as I'd like, but keeping it to the US alone, it's close enough for what I want to do.

Oh, incidentally, sometimes you hear about people throwing darts at a map. That's semi-random, but the map is a projection, so again, some areas are more likely than others. If you think about it, throwing a dart at a globe wouldn't work either. I still haven't worked out a way to get a truly random location, with each point equally likely, on a round planet.

Another thing I found was an app that generates a random zip code. Twice, I've rolled up a zip code and headed there; fortunately, both areas were in the Northeast: one in NJ and one in Massachusetts. Random coordinates, on the other hand, have put me in places like Montana, Alabama, and the actual middle of actual nowhere in central Nevada. To name but a few.

The other downside of random coordinates is that I have to ignore any that are generated in large bodies of water. Other people might follow their GPS into a lake, but I'm not that stupid. (Don't blame the technology. It's always the driver's fault.) The obvious downside to using zip codes is that some have much bigger areas than others.

I said "close enough for what I want to do," but what I want to do is visit breweries and see whatever sights are near (or on the way to or from) these random destinations. Because I take very literally the maxim that "it's the journey, not the destination, that matters." I mean, sure, there are times I care where I end up, like when I'm visiting someone or decide there's something in particular I want to see, but for the most part, I just want to see and experience everything I can. I would even say that there are no destinations; there are only stops on the journey.

So to address the second question, no, obviously I don't usually get upset when the plans change. Normally, I see it as just another part of the adventure. There are exceptions, like when I've made plans with other people and something happens that makes me inconvenience them (for instance, a cancelled flight or heavy traffic delays). But for me alone, nah, give me something new and interesting.

I should probably go ahead and "plan" my next road trip, by which I mean pick a few random destinations and research nearby breweries. Or take a few WDCers up on their offers to meet at various locations. Problem is, I still don't know when I'll be able to do it, and it makes a big difference whether I'll be able to go in June or have to wait until next winter. There are roads that close down completely in the winter, especially out west, and there's always the chance of getting stuck in sn*w. I once thought I'd avoid this by doing a winter road trip through the southern part of the US -- and ended up in a blizzard all the way from Winslow, Arizona to Amarillo, Texas. No one told me there were blizzards in goddamn New Mexico.

And really, my next trip is probably going to be to Belgium, which was supposed to happen last year. That one's going to take a fair bit of planning, but I'm still leaving room in the plans for squirrels.

9 Like • Comment • View 6 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://www.writing.com/main/profile/blog/cathartes02/day/1-19-2021

Site Links:

Resources:

Need help?

Please post questions in
our support forum.

Places of Interest: Unique Wedding Invitations for unique wedding needs. Color Copiers found here.
Baby Names can be hard to pick. Hands-free hygenic toilet seats covers. Dramatic Music rocks.
Vampires are people too. Write Poetry here. Try this Stock Market quiz.
Teaching is a noble job. Get info on Tax Refunds.

All Writing.Com images are copyrighted and may not be copied / modified in any way.
All other brand names & trademarks are owned by their respective companies.

Generated in 0.67 seconds at 10:08pm on Apr 24, 2024 via server web1.