Repost: Happy Talk like a Pirate Day! September 19, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in humor, math.Tags: matrix, rotation, talk like a pirate day
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(This is a repost from my old Livejournal blog.)
On this most holy holiday, where we all celebrate the day when His Noodliness touched us all (and which we observe to prevent more global warming), it’s important to remember what the day is truly about: transformation.
You’ll often hear Pastafarians (and their lesser imitators) say, “Arrrr!” What, you ask, could they be talking about?
It may not be obvious, but they are talking about Arrrr (R), which is the rotation matrix. (Note that this is quite different from the Matrix.)
As any good sea-faring pirate knows, rotation matrices are essential tools for navigation.
From the Most Holy Texts of Wolfram,
Any rotation can be given as a composition of rotations about three axes (Euler’s rotation theorem), and thus can be represented by a matrix operating on a vector,
We should remember, on this day, that a series of rotations can be accomplished by multiplying the matrices of each individual rotation together, thus resulting in a single rotation matrix (not Matrix) to describe the overall transformation that has been achieved.
And this concludes the sermon for today.
Jack sparrow contemplating which rotation matrices will be the most useful in his next ship-board adventure.
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