"Bill DeWitt" <bde### [at] cflrrcom> wrote in message
news:3c506245$1@news.povray.org...

>     No joke, unless you count my State supplied education in math. I did
> mean dot operator, which is what stopped me from understanding most of the
> vector stuff I wanted to know. What this shows is how much I used them
> afterwards, that I didn't remember the term.
>
>     Most of the people here cannot imagine how ignorant of math us
non-math
> types can be. Someone just posted an explanation of those terms that I was
> completely unable to follow. It makes assumptions of knowledge that I just
> don't have. I am sure it is clear to someone, but not me. I may never
> understand vector math if I have to start at that level.
>
>     I'll stick to arithmetic (at most) advice from now on.

Well, everybody begins at zero. Remember how akward it was to substract when
you only knew addition. Right now I'm struggling to understand some
differential equations in order to simulate cloth movement, which may be
very easy for other people.

How old are you?

I suggest you to take small steps and do not try to learn advanced things if
you don't know the fundamentals. Remember everything in math is very
"chained" and you can't understand higher levels if you haven't understood
the lower levels.

I find that going through this staircase, one step at a time, is very
amusing and interesting. Trying to skip some steps can lead you to a sad
frustration.

There are very good books in which you can teach yourself this things. I

written an excellent and very detailed explanation of vectors. You should
try to read it!

Good luck,

Fernando.

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