Search where?

This Portfolio (cathartes02)

All of Writing.Com

◄ November ► 2018
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

Tuesday, Apr. 30, 2024

9:51pm EDT

Members: 956

Guests: 925

Total Online: 1,881

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:

GeminiGem of House Lannister

a day ago
In response to "Supplementary"

Working in health care for a zillion years, I've heard it all. The whole thing about something being natural, therefore it would be good for a person is very, very, very...very prevalent. An internist I worked with had a fantastic comeback to that line of thinking. She would say, "Arsenic is natural, are you going to start taking that?"

1 Like

Lazy Writer est 4/24/2008

Apr 28, 2024 at 2:14pm
In response to "Revisited: "Exercise""

I will be 75 in July. My stepdaughter gave me a bike because I wanted to ride it again. Well, I started off shaky and stayed shaky...then I fell off it...A passing motorist stopped to help me get up...I have NOT been back on that bike and will not ever again.

🌕 HuntersMoon

Apr 28, 2024 at 10:43am
In response to "Revisited: "Exercise""

So, you're saying that now you pedal your ass differently?

Elisa the Bunny Stik

Apr 27, 2024 at 10:33am
In response to "Pleasure and Pain"

it illustrates why it's important to have people from different backgrounds, with different worldviews, working on scientific research.

This right here is why I get rather irritated by people poo-pooing college these days. I feel like that attitude effectively shits on minority populations that may not have strong finances but do possess persistent curiosity and want to learn about various subjects in-depth. In the 90s, these groups were exclusively told to go to trade schools even if they had the aptitude for college education. Nowadays the blanket "Everyone should consider a trade" mantra employs a more subtle (but still abundant) form of discrimination. I'm so over it.

1 Like

Kåre Enga in Udon Thani

Apr 25, 2024 at 3:16am
In response to "Going to the Dogs"

I have ants in Thailand. Will I miss them in Montana? No.

Would it be nice to have a cat and a dog, here or there? Yes, but I have struggles keeping my neglected plants alive.

Not every situation is suitable for everything or everybody.

Kåre Enga in Udon Thani

Apr 25, 2024 at 3:09am
In response to "Tipped Out"

I don't tip. In my travels I rarely find tipping the norm.

I also don't haggle.

When you add the tip... the true cost of America becomes evident. But what would I know? I travel while others who have double my income can't pay rent.

Kåre Enga in Udon Thani

Apr 25, 2024 at 2:58am
In response to "Reality Cubed"

My dreams may be different from your dreams but if we share them with others then some form of the dream may live on. Regardless, if we don't eat we die. "Joy gives us wings." "Reality bites."

Aiva Raine

Apr 24, 2024 at 4:26pm
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

Apr 23, 2024 at 6:51pm
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

Apr 23, 2024 at 3:31pm
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

November 30, 2018 at 12:47am

#946577

November's End

I've been hanging around on the internet for a long, long time.

While I can't say I was an early adopter, I was browsing newsgroups and visiting websites at some point before 1995. I don't recall exactly when. One of the first things I got into was IRC, which had bugger-all to do with the World Wide Web, but it was social media before social media was even a thing.

I chatted with a lot of people there, most of us hiding behind aliases for our own protection. I even met some of them "IRL," as we called it. Some of them are still my friends.

"IRL" was early webspeak for "In Real Life." There was, then, this sense of separation between meatspace and cyberspace, that anything that happened online didn't really count.

I knew better from the beginning.

These people I spoke with were just that - people. No different from the folks I'd meet in my job or activities, except that they were spread out all over the world. While the internet wasn't as ubiquitous then as it is now, it was widespread enough so it wasn't just other people from the US that I'd be talking to.

That, to me, was the draw. I think a lot of people go on the net looking for like-minded individuals - and there's nothing wrong with that; I do it as well - but I was always open to another perspective, possibly from people completely different from me.

Inevitably, I'd find that they weren't so different, after all. At least, we could find some common ground. Age, gender, race, nationality, sexual identity, religion, favorite sports team, whatever - all that becomes secondary to who the person is.

Now, it's often different. People identify themselves by how they fit into these categories. That's okay, but it does focus on what separates us rather than on what unites us.

It seems to me that everyone wants to be unique in some way. That's easy enough if you've only got a few other people around. When I was in high school, I was one of about 300 in my graduating class, 1200 total in the school. I went to university and I was but one out of 20,000. After that, when competing for jobs, I was one of 40,000.

On the internet, I'm one of 7 billion. And so are you.

Excelling in a milieu like that is tantamount to winning a lottery. It's not just a matter of not being a big fish in a small pond; it's more like being a piece of plankton floating in the Pacific.

So there's this tension - a sense of competitiveness. A pull between wanting to be unique and wanting to fit in. This woman has 20,000 Tweeter followers. This man's YouTube channel has 50,000 subscribers. What can the rest of us do except follow along?

I figured out early on that there's nothing that I can do that someone else hasn't already done, and better than I could possibly do it. Nothing I can say that hasn't already been said, in a more elegant or satisfying manner. Nothing I can invent that someone else hasn't already patented and started making money on. No jokes that haven't already been told to death. And nothing I can write that would ever stand out amidst the teeming billions of writers.

The best I can hope for is to connect with someone, occasionally. And I'm okay with that. So thanks for reading, and - specifically addressing this to others in the November blog challenge - thanks for writing. I'm supposed to cite one new fact I've learned about a fellow blogger this month. Incidentally, just to see if you're actually reading this, anyone who comments on this entry before the end of today based on website time will get a season ticket chosen at random. Just throwing that in here as a thanks for reading this far. So anyway, one new fact about a fellow blogger?

That's tough, because, as with the early days I mentioned above, I've learned a lot of things about a lot of people. I don't think I really knew most of you other bloggers before this started; of course, I don't think I really know you now, apart from what you've chosen to show us in your writing. If I mention one author, or a few, I feel like I'm shafting the others. But mentioning everybody would be an even more daunting task. Just know that I've appreciated reading all of the different entries and seeing everyone's perspective on things.

So I don't even want to tag anyone here; therefore, I'm not going the {user:name} route. If I have to call out just one person, I'll make it pwheeler. She and I are obviously very different (well, except for the cat thing), and yet I've learned a few things from her entries, notably about food. And food, as you know by now, is one of my favorite things, as long as it isn't too healthy.

Just another example of finding commonality, I suppose. We could do with more of that. Arguments and debates have their place, of course, but in the end, aren't we all just people trying to make our way through the crowd? Don't answer that - someone's bound to say "no, some of us are lizard aliens from Antares 7" or something.

That someone is usually me, so I'm nipping that right in the bud.

7 Like • Comment • View 9 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/11-30-2018