{ "cells": [ { "cell_type": "markdown", "metadata": {}, "source": [ "# What is an atom?\n", "## 6. A polynomial?\n" ] }, { "cell_type": "markdown", "metadata": {}, "source": [ "At this stage, we should expect that the complex numbers will be our atoms, and we'll form a composite out of them. What are these composites? You've probably heard of them before: they are *polynomials*. Indeed, we will now take for our composites \"equations\" themselves.\n", "\n", "Recall that a polynomial is defined quite like a \"base-n\" number, but what before was the \"base\" is now a *variable*. The $c_{n}$ are generally complex coefficients.\n", "\n", "$ f(z) = \\dots + c_{4}z^{4} + c_{3}z^{3} + c_{2}z^{2} + c_{1}z + c_{0} $\n", "\n", "Two important things we can do to polynomials are differentiate and integrate them.\n", "\n", "For instance, $\\frac{d}{dz} x^{2} = 2x$. And inversely: $\\int 2x dx = x^{2} + C$, where we also add a constant C, since when we differentiate it, it will go to zero (so we can't rule out it's not there). \n", "\n", "We can have polynomials with a finite number of terms, but we could also have infinite polynomials. Here's an interesting fact. \n", "\n", "The meaning of the derivative of a function $\\frac{d}{dx} f(x)$ is the change with regard to x at the input value. For a real valued function, you can imagine it like the slope of the line tangent to the curve at that point. You can imagine choosing two points on the curve, and bringing them infinitesimally close together, so that you get a linear approximation to the curve at that point. Inversely, integration is like summing the area under a curve with little rectangles, and imagining shrinking the size of the rectangles to be infinitesimally small.\n", "\n", "Check out this image of $sin(x)$ and $cos(x)$:\n", "\n", "" ] }, { "cell_type": "markdown", "metadata": {}, "source": [ "It happens that $\\frac{d}{dx} sin(x) = cos(x)$ and $\\frac{d}{dx} cos(x) = -sin(x)$. You can see this visually. When sine is at its peak, its tangent line is a horizontal line: $\\frac{\\Delta rise}{\\Delta run} = \\frac{0}{1}$. And behold: cosine is 0 there! And when cosine has a peak, sine is 0! And this holds the whole way through. \n", "\n", "Notice $\\frac{d}{dx} sin(x) = cos(x) \\rightarrow \\frac{d}{dx} cos(x) = -sin(x) \\rightarrow \\frac{d}{dx} -sin(x) = -cos(x) \\rightarrow \\frac{d}{dx} -cos(x) = sin(x)$, and we come full circle. Whereas a finite dimensional polynomial will eventually give you 0 if you differentiate it enough times, an \"infinite dimensional polynomial\" can be differentiated an infinite number of times.\n", "\n", "