The Road to Reality
by Roger Penrose. It's always been a dream of mine to really understand the laws of the universe, it's just a shame I'm never in the mood for 'hard sums' when doing a spot of bedtime reading.

I'm going to have to put some serious effort in. I haven't got past complex numbers yet. I am a maths graduate as well, but that was sooooooooo long ago.

Stupid universe is too damn complicated.
( TheFinch is getting to grips with the complex plane on, Sat 26 Jun 2010, 10:29, 5 replies)

Complex numbers...
... aren't that difficult. Remember the "number lines" that you had in primary school, for showing how addition and subtraction and negative numbers worked? Stick another one on the page at right angles to the first. Simple.
(gordonjcp, Sat 26 Jun 2010, 10:42, closed)

I understand complex numbers completely
I have qualifications in maths and everything..

I just haven't started the next chapter yet... nor am I likely to any time soon without a rocket up my arse.
( TheFinch is getting to grips with the complex plane on, Sat 26 Jun 2010, 10:45, closed)

My copy of Road to Reality has an accusatory bookmark
about 15% of the way in. He lost me at covariant vs. contravariant tensors. It's frustrating because I can almost get it; the glimmer of understanding sparks off int he dark, but then it gutters and dies and the meaning slips away again.

You have spurred me to put this back onto my "things to read real soon" pile.
( Amish Information Systems hates misplaced, commas, Sat 26 Jun 2010, 13:48, closed)

I'm the same as you
and couldn't put it better myself. It WILL be finished one day.
( TheFinch is getting to grips with the complex plane on, Sat 26 Jun 2010, 14:32, closed)

Well,
They both define the transformed components as linear combinations of the original components, in the contravariant case the coefficients are the partials of the new coordinates with respect to the old, whereas in the covariant case the coefficients are the partials of the old coefficients with respect to the new.

Simples.
(Shippy likes linebreaks and doesn't care what you think, Sat 26 Jun 2010, 19:24, closed)