On 5/3/2011 2:29 AM, Gregory Ewing wrote:
Terry Reedy wrote:
The trick is that replacing x with j and evaluating therefore causes
(in Python) all the coefficients of x (now j) to be added together
separately from all the constant terms to reduce the linear equation
to a*x+b (= 0 implied).
Hmmm... so if we used quaternions, could we solve systems
of linear equations in 3 variables?
Yes and no. The use of 1*j merely collected and added together all the
multipliers of 'x' (and all the constant terms). That is a fairly
trivial matter of constant folding. Systems of linear equations are
usually presented in that form already. The actual solution to the
simple equation is in the formula x = -a/b (where a and b are the sums).
The solution formula for three variables would be far more complex.
--
Terry Jan Reedy
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
