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java.math.max | 687 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
java.math.max
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, April 28 2012 @ 12:35 AM EDT
Is there an accepted definition of what it means to select the maximum of two
complex numbers? I've never heard of such a thing. There's no general way to
impose a strict ordering on a vector value, and such a lack typically means the
operation is considered undefined.

Magnitude? max(<-3,0>,<2,0>) = <-3,0> Say what, -3 > 2?
Piecewise? max (<2,0>, <0,3>) = <2,3> A completely new
value?
Real dominates? max(<1,0>,<0,9999>) = <1,0> But why?


I was taught that you *never* want to overload operators or reference
mathematical functions if there's any ambiguity in meaning in the applied
context, there's just too much chance for misinterpretation.

IIRC that's even why C doesn't have an exponentiation operator, there was a
fairly even split on whether it should associate left-to-right or right-to-left,
with the result that 2**3**4 could reasonably be expected to be interpreted as
either (2**3)**4 or 2**(3**4), so they decided it was better to eliminate untold
mysterious bugs by leaving it out entirely in favor of the pow() function which
would specify association explicitly

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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