I don't know if this is the place to ask Math questions...
One of my friends is translating a book about computer graphics, written by Peter Cooley and he's almost done. He's got a BSc in Software and he's good at it. So far so good.
In the book there's a chapter Homogeous Coordinates, which everyone who's got just a little bit a Matrix-Math in their head should be able to figure out quite easily. But then you should know about this
One of my friends is translating a book about computer graphics, written by Peter Cooley and he's almost done. He's got a BSc in Software and he's good at it. So far so good.
In the book there's a chapter Homogeous Coordinates, which everyone who's got just a little bit a Matrix-Math in their head should be able to figure out quite easily. But then you should know about this
[u v w q]
where u,v and w are the coordinates of the vector and q represents an extra plane used for transformations. All this can be put aside.
The question IS: When was this q introduced to the vector for the first time in history? And where does it come from?
My friend is bothered about this since he learned about it in college where his teachers and scholars didn't know the answer.
He emailed the author of the book who didn't bug enough to answer.
He sought for an alternate for the q as the transformation won't work without it and he came to a conclusion similar to this:
if a+b=x,
is it possible to write a sentence using a, b, * and ÷ and get the result of x?
Because this is not possible(or we din't find the answer), we need this extra q
OK, I'm not exactly the math guru so you have to figure out what I mean by all this nonsense.
Does anybody know about the Mystery of the Little q?
It'd be great if you could help me and my friend as he is convinced not to get the book published without a appendix anout the exrta q...
I'm using german, where you only use singular for "scienceS"