Slew

Slew

Many of you know that I create this column by looking the word over, thinking abut it, and then doing a DuckDuckGo search to see what the interwebs come up with. Usually from there I can get enough ideas to just make some crap up as I go along. It's a good system and one that I've used in different forms pretty much my entire life, which is why...well, we don't need to get into all that.

Unfortunately last night I had major insomnia and didn't get to sleep til around 2.00 - 2.30. For some people four-five hours of sleep may be all they need, but for me it's killer. That's why, even though I really really want to write something using this, I can't get beyond my fascination with the article to come up with something. I mean, many of the words mean something by themselves, but in this context, it's like reading Hebrew or something. Ironically one of the things that went through my head for a few minutes last night - and believe me, there were many - was wondering what it would be like to actually speak with a true-to-life Sheldon from The Big-Bang Theory. So you can imagine my awe and wonder when under the Talk tab of the entry I found:

The article currently has a statement which indicates that every unitary matrix (possibly only unitary 3 × 3 matrices), has an eigenvalue of 1. The eigenvalues of unitary matrices have absolute value 1, but need not be equal to 1. If the entries are real, then the eigenvalues are either all real, or include one complex number z, its conjugate 1/z, and a real eigenvalue, either 1 or -1. The determinant of the matrix is either 1 or -1. If the determinant is 1, then in this case, it must have an eigenvalue of 1, but if the determinant is -1, then it must not. Similarly in the three real case, if the matrix has eigenvalues -1, -1, -1, then it cannot have an eigenvalue of 1. In case the matrix has complex entries (which is implicitly encouraged by using the term unitary matrix instead of orthogonal matrix), then of course it can have arbitrary triples of eigenvalues chosen from the set of complex numbers of absolute value 1. For instance the diagonal matrix with entries i,-i,-1 is unitary has determinant 1 and has no eigenvalue equal to 1. JackSchmidt (talk) 20:06, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I love The Big Bang Theory; the 'sband and I watch it and laugh and laugh. I've often wondered how true-to-life the conversations were that Sheldon had with people. I'm now thinking that if they were truly true-to-life conversations, they wouldn't be funny cuz no one would know what the hell the words were that he was using, much less the major themes and theories of the sentences uttered.

Oh, but I do understand one thing - in the first line "(Possibly only unitary 3 x 3 matrices)" would be nine!! It's "unitary 9 matrices"! Hey, maybe I can do this aerospace engineering thing after all!!