Single Component Vectors

Sports score couplets are vectors. They have at least one component and a particular order. The specific order isn’t the criteria; that there is an order is the criteria.

However that doesn’t mean that vectors require two or more components. A single component can be a vector.

Example: score differentials. Last week JMU lost 38-45 to Georgia Southern. The differential was -7. That differential is a vector.

It’s got at least one component, the 7, with a particular order. The order is the order of the two teams. The differential could be +7, with direction reversed but magnitude the same, provided the order is reversed. +7 would be the Georgia-JMU differential. Single component, particular order.

Put another way, a vector is an amplitude and a direction. The 7 is the amplitude, the +/- is the direction.

This is why all negative numbers are vectors. They address a state of change, and the order of the components changing is the order of this small vector.

Calculators

I just bought a $100 calculator.

Normally I’m in one of two regimes: $15 calculators or computer software (Matlab, Mathematica, etc.). I infrequently need something inbetween.

However, for some tests I now do, and the quick and dirty TI 30XIIS has hit its limits. Those limits aren’t excessive naming symbols. I got a TI 83+, which apparently isn’t one of the current really good graphing calculators. For me, it’s night and day. It can invert complex functions with a press of a button. I don’t slog through radian/degree conversions. The thing does full on matrix multiplication without dropping negative signs. It’s like seeing dawn.

Still, for a hundred bucks, it better knock my socks off.

It did.

The Struggle

It’s a struggle to find positive things to say right now. But that makes the struggle even more important.

My Unicomp buckling-spring keyboard is frankly incredible. It is better than any other keyboard I have ever used. I can’t use it at work, because it is kinda loud. At home, it is mechanical perfect. This is the keyboard of the Clockwork Gods.