This is about polar forms, or how to express 3-4i as |z|(cos theta + i sin theta). I'm okay with the z (it's 5), but I'm a little unsure about theta.

This is like Charlie Brown's teacher talking to me.

~

Anyone watch all of Supernatural Tuesday or tonight? I watched the last 40 minutes, roughly, but I am baffled about what happened there with the dead girlfriend on the ceiling (?!) and the spontaneous combustion at the end. Can anyone fill me in?

Amy, what happened at the end is the same way their mother died in the first five minutes of the show.

Ah! And, oh. That's sad. Thanks, Dana!

I might actually watch it for a few more episodes. I like spooky stuff. And they're both very pretty.

Can anyone fill me in?

AmyLiz, that's a callback to the opening sequence. What happened to his girlfriend is exactly what happened to his mother, when he and his brother were very young boys.

This is like Charlie Brown's teacher talking to me.

Oh, I know. Where the hell are we supposed to learn about complex numbers, anyway? It wasn't in the Trig for Dummies book I read. Is it a precalculus thing? Because those are the two (general track) math courses I didn't take, and I keep running into "Of course, we all remember how to do the blah blah..."

Behold... 3. Become mesmerised in its intricacies! You are powerless to resist its seductive fascination as it saps your will and makes you its willing slave!

This post brought to you by John Nash's Guide to Suggesting a Threesome.

to ACTUARIES

Yeah, I thought it wasn't bad fluff. And I've always liked Dean from Gilmore Girls. Who is not Dean on this show.

No! This is about polar forms, or how to express 3-4i as |z|(cos theta + i sin theta). I'm okay with the z (it's 5), but I'm a little unsure about theta. From my notes, apparently it's inverse tangent(-4/3), but then I should check to make sure the angle measurement I come up with is in the right quadrant, and that's where I get a little uncertain.

All true, and the quadrant you wind up in will be the lower right quadrant. The real part of your number (i.e. the 3) appears on your x axis, so you'll be right rather than left. The imaginary part (the -4, i.e. the coefficient of i) appears on the y axis, so you're lower rather than upper.

to ACTUARIES

And what did you think constitutes my target audience?

Thanks, Sean!

I keep running into "Of course, we all remember how to do the blah blah..."

See, that's so not me. I barely scraped through high school math and never even took calculus, and in college I managed to take some History of Math course with an insane old guy who wore a beret and made us read Flatland and the annotated Alice in Wonderland. And I still use my fingers when doing basic sums half the time. I applaud all you mathy types because your brains are so sexy. I have a mad crush on Charlie from Numb3rs.