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Sunday, Jun. 30, 2024

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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:

Kåre Enga in Montana

a day ago
In response to "Je Voyagerai"

I once was allergic to going on a cruise. But... I should... just for the experience. I've gotten out of my comfort zone for experience.

With the crush of tourists these days any travel should include how much you want to put up with "other people's vacation" as opposed to your own.

1 Like

Lazy Writer est 4/24/2008

a day ago
In response to "Je Voyagerai"

Happy traveling..be safe.

Elisa: Middle Aged Stik

a day ago
In response to "It Ain't Wrong"

Ain’t apparently begins as amn’t, a contraction for am not, which you can still hear in Ireland and Scotland today

I mean, an abundant number of Scotch and Irish immigrants ended up in the American South, so this tracks.

While a lot of people consider ain’t improper, it’s a very regular and legitimate part of many forms of English, including in Black English (AAVE). Be mindful that judging someone’s use of ain’t as “wrong” can be a very socially loaded act, to say the least.

For some reason, this reminds of one of the reasons I stopped reading Ask A Manager. A bunch of people were getting real uppity about the use of the phrase "baby daddy". Unsurprisingly, many of these people appeared white. One Black person in the comments finally had enough and threw down with this remark:

"I gotta say, as a black woman it grates to have phrases that come out of AAVE be appropriated, assigned negative connotation (likely because they come from black culture), then discarded with prejudice. If you’re using the phrase to conjure up stereotypical imagery, I can get on board with putting an end to that. But there are plenty of people for whom baby daddy or baby mama are not pejorative at all, just descriptors of the relationship in their dialect, and correcting them to “Father of my child” is just another case of denigrating minority speech patterns and legitimate AAVE grammatical constructions and upholding “white is right” standards."

(For more context, check out this link

1 Like

🌕 HuntersMoon

Jun 28, 2024 at 10:54am
In response to "It Ain't Wrong"

Ain't you on a roll today...

3 Like

Adherennium Dr of Phoolishness

Jun 27, 2024 at 11:53am
In response to "Wave Rider"

Horrifying fact, I once painted a reproduction of the Hokusai wave on our bathroom wall. Eventually of course it was painted over, but I like to fantasise that in some distant future it will be archaeologically excavated and held up as an example of early cultural appropriation, (badly executed too.)

1 Like

Annette

Jun 26, 2024 at 8:16pm
In response to "The Oz Hypothesis"

The nekked wimmin look like something that I might have drawn in first grade.

1 Like

Aiva Raine

Jun 25, 2024 at 10:16pm
In response to "Can't Spell Success without Sucs"

Ok- this made me truly LOL- "sipping a gin and tonic made with low-paid laborer tears"

Thank you. Totally agree with the rest of your article.

Money doesn't solve all problems but it sure as hell eliminates many and makes it easier to go places or buy things that can create some happiness. IE- a property somewhere quiet and peaceful and a trailer with which to chill on said property.

Rich people are typically clueless assholes.

1 Like

Anni Pon

Jun 25, 2024 at 9:30am
In response to "Can't Spell Success without Sucs"

I've never heard anyone say, "That guy is so successful, but he doesn't really make much money." Or anything similar. Sure, you can have a positive impact on the world without making lots of money, but people won't call it success.

2 Like

Annette

Jun 23, 2024 at 1:28pm
In response to "Revisited: "Experience""

This is how I coped:

1 Like

Elisa: Middle Aged Stik

Jun 23, 2024 at 9:51am
In response to "Revisited: "Experience""

Not gonna lie I kinda miss Zoom parties, at least for this community since people on WDC are so spread out. Meeting in person is pretty tricky and/or expensive. It's certainly more socializing than I've been doing regularly since, oh, 2022 or so.

As for server migration, well, I work in the IT world. I've been through that. And honestly, server migration is a bit nerve wracking, as some stuff can go missing. It's still more manageable than a complete redesign. Complete redesigns are awful. You can test in different environments that the public can't see till kingdom come, but things always go wrong when the public version is rolled out. A local grocery store recently redid their website, and the old site held thousands of recipes. When the new site was unveiled, none of those recipes made it over. I ended up reaching out on Messenger and was able to get a copy of a recipe I use somewhat often, but I'm kind of annoyed that the text recipes are currently MIA because somehow that data didn't transfer with the site rebuild. Absolute madness.

1 Like

June 8, 2024 at 9:18am

#1072332

Terminator

This piece, a recent one from The Guardian, is about communication, so it may be of interest to writers here.

The big idea: the simple trick that can sabotage your critical thinking
Influencers and politicians use snappy cliches to get you on side – but you can fight fire with fire

Ha! I see what you did there, headline writer.

Since the moment I learned about the concept of the “thought-terminating cliche” I’ve been seeing them everywhere I look: in televised political debates, in flouncily stencilled motivational posters, in the hashtag wisdom that clogs my social media feeds.

No, you've always been seeing them. Now, you recognize them for what they are.

Coined in 1961 by psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, the phrase describes a catchy platitude aimed at shutting down or bypassing independent thinking and questioning.

These days, when I see or hear "platitude," I picture an angry platypus (one with an attitude). Look, it helps me, okay? Apparently, the word derives from the French plat, meaning flat or dull (I guess in the same sense that we use "flat" for non-glossy paints). But in that same language, plat also means dish—in the same way that, in English, "dish" can refer to both a plate (a word obviously also derived from plat) and the food you put on it to eat. This makes a platitude feel like something easily prepared and consumed, which is really damned appropriate.

Also, I'm pretty sure it was Ogden Nash who came up with the phrase "duck-billed platitude."

But I digress, as per usual.

In his book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, Lifton wrote that these semantic stop signs compress “the most far-reaching and complex of human problems … into brief, highly selective, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. They become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.”

That's a whole lot of words to express what I call "bumper-sticker philosophy," which I suppose is my own thought-terminating cliché.

As the article points out, though, TTCs (do not expect me to type the phrase every damn time) aren't necessarily bad. Like any word or phrase, they can be used for good or evil.

Unfortunately, mere awareness of such tricks is not always enough to help us resist their influence. For this, we can blame the “illusory truth effect” – a cognitive bias defined by the unconscious yet pervasive tendency to trust a statement simply because we have heard it multiple times.

This gets weaponized a lot, too. Keep repeating things like "greed is good," and people start to believe it. Or, like someone we all know of, continue to lie and your minions lap it up as divine Truth, even though it's objectively a lie.

But what if we could do that with the actual truth?

To compete in the marketplace of thought-terminating cliches, then, our best bet might be to take what we know about illusory truth and harness it to spread accurate information.

Like that.

Beyond repetition, studies show that people perceive statements as more believable when presented in easy-to-read fonts or easy-to-understand speech styles, such as rhyme.

Or, you know, alliteration like in my example above.

This, of course, is where writers come in.

And a 2021 study showed that humour is among the qualities that make information more memorable and shareable. A titbit is “just more likely to spread if it’s funny”, says Scheirer.

Did you know that we here in America call small morsels of food or information tidbits instead of titbits because our Puritanical sensibilities required the change? Yeah? Then you were subjected to misinformation.

Probably. I mean, it felt right to me, too, because I'm not without bias, myself. But apparently, "tit" has at least two entirely separate etymologies.

It doesn’t only have to be shameless disinformers who exploit the power of repetition, rhyme, pleasing graphics and funny memes. “Remember, it’s OK to repeat true information,” says Fazio.

The trick, of course, is to know what's true, and in a postmodern world, that's becoming increasingly difficult. Even facts that should be universally accepted, such as the approximate shape or age of the Earth, are subject to strong opposition.

As the article implies, though, this doesn't mean we shouldn't make the attempt.

2 Like • Comment • View 1 comment

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