I will soon be making the first post that I believe lives up to this site’s name, “Neural Dump.” The post will be an informal outline of the derivation of Euler’s Formula. I consider this forthcoming post to be a “neural dump” since the audience I am primarily targeting is me.
“Huh?” you ask. Well, let me explain …
Euler’s Formula is just one of many that I use day in and day out. Since I consider this formula fundamental (as do probably everyone that’s ever encountered it), I don’t mind sparing the neurons and synapses to keep it memorized. Every once in a while though, I like to go back to first principles just to keep myself on my toes and to not lose track of why something works the way it does.
I am tired of digging through my voluminous menagerie of spiral-bound notebooks, hard-bound composition books, and three ring binders stuffed with loose pages of notes, handwritten software code, seemingly random scribblings, and proofs, both successful and abandoned, every time I want see what originally gave me confidence in the formulas and equations that I’ve come to take for granted.
Instead I am going to try to transfer my haphazard paper-based knowledge base to this site. That way when the urge to rediscover something strikes me, I can find my previous work easier and not have to waste precious cycles thumbing, sometimes fruitlessly, through stacks of disorganized notes.
Maybe you will find these “Neural Dump” posts useful, and I hope you do. I know that I will. And please, if you see any errors, make a comment or drop me an e-mail. Selfishly, I need to know if I’ve made mistakes in my calculations or reasonings since so much of what I do is inherently hierarchical and requires a solid foundation to build upon. And of course, there may be the odd site visitor or two who end up here looking to learn something, and I wouldn’t want to lead anyone astray.
Now, on with the dump…