On 7 Jul 2003 20:57:47 GMT, Laurel Amberdine wrote:
On Mon, 7 Jul 2003 18:45:12 +0000 (UTC), Gregory L. Hansen wrote:
In article ,
Laurel Amberdine wrote:

I so like responding to myself.

snip
Ignorance time: people are saying "to first (second, zeroth) order" etc,
quite often lately. What does it mean, anyway?

If you have some function f(x), perhaps an unknown that you're trying to
solve equations of motion to find, it's often possible to approximate it
and wind up with a polynomial expansion. So you might get

f(x) ~= a + bx + cx^2 + ...

First order would be linear in x, second order would be quadratic in x,
etc.

Okay, thanks! It sounded familiar but I couldn't recall enough to piece a
meaning together.

And now I have come across "second order" and "third order" (etc)
determinants, and I don't know if (or how) that relates to the same
phrasing above. (I do know what it means in this context. Kinda obvious.)

That isn't really a question. I'm just babbling as a break from really
excessive quantities of multiplying, adding, and subtracting. Zeroes. I
just wish there were more zeroes...!



-Laurel