Quaternions in Python

[Erik Max Francis]

Johann Hibschman wrote:
> 
> >>>>> "Erik" == Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> writes:
> 
>     Erik> You're missing the point.  Quaternions can behave
>     Erik> qualitatively differently from their corresponding matrices.
> 
> Eh?  Say you have the Pauli spin matrices (complex 2x2 matrices), how
> on earth do those behave qualitatively different from quaternions?  As
> far as I can tell, they *are* quaternions.

That's perfectly valid, but I don't think it's what the poster I
responded to meant.  He meant encoding the transform represented by the
quarternion into a matrix.  As I and others have pointed out, that
presents problems, because matrices for transformations are more fragile
than quarternions in some areas.

-- 
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