Not sure.  I suppose instead of

    -@^.@(+/&.:*:)

we could write:

    ^.@%@(+/&.:*:)

or even:

    ^.@(+/&.:(*: :. (^&_0.5) ) )

But I'm not sure what this buys us.  

-----Original Message-----
From: programming-boun...@forums.jsoftware.com
[mailto:programming-boun...@forums.jsoftware.com] On Behalf Of km
Sent: Monday, December 16, 2013 7:49 PM
To: programm...@jsoftware.com
Subject: Re: [Jprogramming] A complex question?

Dan, I haven't been following this thread, but know that minus the logarithm
of a positive number is the logarithm of the reciprocal.  Is that relevant?

   ^. 1r4 1r2 1 2 4
_1.38629 _0.693147 0 0.693147 1.38629


--Kip

Sent from my iPad

> On Dec 16, 2013, at 3:42 PM, Dan Bron <j...@bron.us> wrote:
> 
> Raul wrote:
>> Is there a better way of doing this?
>>   {: +. r.inv j./1 1
> 
> Marshall responded:
>> You can also use (+/&.:*:) in place of |@j./ , leaving you with 
>> -@^.@(+/&.:*:)"1
> 
> Raul wrote:
>> Experimenting: the - is necessary and the ^. is not necessary. 
>> (I do not get a hexagon without the minus, I do get a hexagon without 
>> the ^.).
> 
>> Immediately after writing this I realized the - is also unnecessary - 
>> changing >./ to <./
> 
> What I love is that through some simple trig and a few experiments, we 
> got from {:@+.@(r.^:_1)@(j./) to +/&.:*: .
> 
> I suppose I find this particularly gratifying because I spent some 
> time trying to restate Raul's phrase in terms of simple arithmetic 
> operations, staying entirely in the real domain, and I eventually 
> reproduced Marshall's verb.  Having spent so much time "simplifying", 
> when I got the final, irreducible result, I wondered at the need for 
> -@^. , and what its physical interpretation was.
> 
> Raul's original verb could be rendered in English as "the length 
> component of a polar coordinate (initially specified in Cartesian 
> terms)".  Why should that length be expressed as the negative log of a 
> distance?  Why not, as Don put it, "the raw distance"?
> 
> I know there are subtle and beautiful connections between the 
> trigonometric and exponential functions, and the e hidden in r. is one 
> expression of that.  But I'm still not seeing the fundamental physical
interpretation.
> In other words, I wasn't surprised with the -@^. disappeared in Raul's 
> use case; I might've been more surprised if it'd persisted.
> 
> Anyone want to help me see it? Maybe the best illustration would be a 
> concrete use case where the -@^. isn't superfluous - one where where 
> it is not only necessary, but inevitable?
> 
> That is, a use case where -@^. has obvious physical interpretation, 
> when applied to the distance. Ideally one like Raul's, which 
> ultimately didn't involve complex numbers (i.e. a real-valued binary 
> [dyadic] operation on real numbers).
> 
> -Dan
> 
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