The fact that many LessWrongers have read and enjoyed it indicates it’s not too verbose for the target audience.
It appears to be one of the least-read of the original Sequences—I say this based on the low, zero or even negative karma scores and the few comments. This is evidence for the precise opposite of your claim.
Data point: I only read part of the QM sequence, but that wasn’t due to the verbosity as such, but rather because I wasn’t familiar with complex numbers and it felt like too much work to learn to use a new math concept and then work my way through the calculations.
It’s simpler than you think: you just treat i as an unknown variable where all you know is that i^2 = −1. Then if you want to, say, multiply together two complex numbers, it’s all the algebra you’re already familiar with: (a + bi)(c + di) = ac + adi + bci + bdi^2 = ac—bd + (ad + bc)i. That’s it—that’s all the complex maths you need to follow the QM sequence.
To better understand why it is used imagine a map, going right is +, going left is -, going up is i, going down is -i. Turning left is multiplying by i, turning right is multiplying by -i.
So i is used to calculate things where you need 2 dimensions.
Okay, thanks. I have only read the first few posts. On those, the karma score was higher and there was positive feedback from readers saying it was helpful to them. I should have read further in the series before characterizing it as a whole.
It appears to be one of the least-read of the original Sequences—I say this based on the low, zero or even negative karma scores and the few comments. This is evidence for the precise opposite of your claim.
Data point: I only read part of the QM sequence, but that wasn’t due to the verbosity as such, but rather because I wasn’t familiar with complex numbers and it felt like too much work to learn to use a new math concept and then work my way through the calculations.
It’s simpler than you think: you just treat i as an unknown variable where all you know is that i^2 = −1. Then if you want to, say, multiply together two complex numbers, it’s all the algebra you’re already familiar with: (a + bi)(c + di) = ac + adi + bci + bdi^2 = ac—bd + (ad + bc)i. That’s it—that’s all the complex maths you need to follow the QM sequence.
Alright, thanks.
To better understand why it is used imagine a map, going right is +, going left is -, going up is i, going down is -i. Turning left is multiplying by i, turning right is multiplying by -i. So i is used to calculate things where you need 2 dimensions.
Okay, thanks. I have only read the first few posts. On those, the karma score was higher and there was positive feedback from readers saying it was helpful to them. I should have read further in the series before characterizing it as a whole.