Introductory talk on Geometric Algebra

Rotation

A few weeks ago I gave at work an introductory talk on Geometric Algebra. In my slides, I mostly followed the exposition in David Hestenes’ New Foundations for Classical Mechanics. And since we’re mostly a MATLAB shop I also used Gable to show how to perform some practical computations.

Introduction to Geometric Algebra

7 Responses to “Introductory talk on Geometric Algebra”

  1. Peeter Joot February 8, 2010 at 14:57 #

    fyi. I’ve posted a link to this in the google GA forum.

    http://groups.google.ca/group/geometric_algebra/browse_thread/thread/64c72da3309663a0

    • jmbr February 8, 2010 at 15:27 #

      Thanks for posting it and notifying me. I wasn’t aware of this group.

  2. Scott February 8, 2010 at 16:38 #

    There is a mistake on slide 38.

    (a)^(-b) is not equal to (-a)^(-b)

    Still, good job on this introduction, it gives a nice feeling for what is happening. I think it would be nice if there was more exposition on what you actually mean by ‘sweeping’ along another vector. I personally know what it is, but the idea was very foreign to me and painful at first. A bank of animations would clear that right up, along with all of the properties (like anti-commutivity).

    Thanks again.

    • jmbr February 8, 2010 at 20:26 #

      Indeed, it should read a^(-b) = (-b)^(-a). Thank you for spotting that and taking the time to review the presentation. I will update the document soon.

  3. Scott February 8, 2010 at 22:18 #

    Sorry, I couldn’t edit the last slide. There is another slight mistake on slide 61. The definitions for (5) and (6) should be switched. This leads to a problem in the later computation, though.

  4. jmbr February 8, 2010 at 23:02 #

    Hi Scott,

    This is not a mistake, definitions (5) and (6) agree (note that B = b^c) with their general form which is given in (22) and (23).

    Thanks again for working through the slides.

  5. Scott February 9, 2010 at 04:08 #

    Ah, missed that. Thanks again.

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