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Contents 1 Tone 2 Original when I created this page 3 Scalar or scaler 4 Quadrential versor or quadrantal versor 5 Does this belong some place else 5.1 Removed reference to radius vector. 6 This article urgently needs to be divided! 6.1 Classical hamilton quaternions now has more than a dozen citations 6.2 The plauge of modern notation

[edit] Tone

Statements such as Here is where it gets interesting. need to be removed, per WP:STYLE and WP:NPOV (not to mention the whole article needs sourcing per WP:V) Marasmusine (talk) 17:18, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree it has been removed. Thank you so much for looking at this new page and commenting so quickly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hobojaks (talk • contribs) 17:33, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Original when I created this page

Hello and welcome to Classical Hamiltonian Quaternions.

This page began because the historical section was growing faster than the modern section, and I feared that soon a single section, 10.1 of that page, would contain more chapter headings than the rest of the entire page combined.

Thats not fair to modern quaternions. They are a living breathing growing mathmatical entity, which is constantly finding new uses for itself.

This page is not about that, it is about the quaternions of the 19th century. I suggest that sources cited would be more interesting if they were actually from that era.

The story of 19th century quaternions ends in 1901, which interestingly was the date of the publishing of Gibb's book vector analysis.

A 21st century reader reading vector analysis, would find much of the notation very familar. But go back any farther and things are very different. The words mean something different than the do today.

Of particular importance, the words vector and tensor meant something different in the quaternion system.

"quaternion products" is also a 20th and 21st century idea.

So well lets get started. I am very much suprised that this material is not on wikipedia already in this format.

Hobojaks (talk) 17:30, 26 January 2008 (UTC) 17:30, 26 January 2008 (UTC)Hobojaks (talk)

[edit] Scalar or scaler

The common modern spelling is scalar, but scaler is used quite often in the article. I will bulk correct this on my next pass, but I wanted to make sure there was no subtle distinction between the two.

While I suggest not worrying too much about technical aspects (spelling, detailed grammar, wiki tags), the article appears dangerously WP:OR, at least partially due to writing style. I suggest concentrating on fixing tone issues which have produced WP:V unverifiable claims, and the secondly fixing the potentially verifiable statements for which you have provided no WP:RS reliable source.

I'll work on correcting the technical aspects so the article appears better at first glance. I've already taken care of the technical problem that was preventing headers from working correctly, now there are just the spelling errors and wiki links, I think. JackSchmidt (talk) 18:04, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Your right it is a typo.

Have a look at section VIII

I believe it to be the first occurence of the word scalar. http://historical.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/cul.math/docviewer?did=05230001&seq=78&frames=0&view=100

Hamilton had been lecturing and exchanging letters with fellow thinkers of his day on the subject of quaternions since his discovery of them in 1843.

Lectures on Quaternions however is his first published work.

Am I misinformed, my conception of the past is that Hamilton is at the very least the leader in a joint effort in the 19th century to develope quaternions.

You get the feeling from reading his lectures that his students, all of them very high level university math students, have never even been exposed to the word vector used with the precise mathmatical definition that he gives it.

Hamilton called a radius vector a Vectum, or I don't speak latin, like his students obviously did. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hobojaks (talk • contribs) 18:34, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Quadrential versor or quadrantal versor

Two similar spellings, apparently used interchangeably. Which single one should be used, and should the other be mentioned as an alternate spelling or is it just a typo? JackSchmidt (talk) 18:11, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

quadrantal

http://historical.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/cul.math/docviewer?did=05230001&seq=79&frames=0&view=100

Hobojaks (talk) 18:40, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I fixed both scaler and quadrential.

I would suggest just working on the OR problems paragraph by paragraph. Even ones that are "pure speculation and have no business on wikipedia" might be just a few word changes away from a "well sourced interesting statement demonstrating the utility and reliability of wikipedia". Most of the ones I have marked are likely to be in this form. Instead of claiming to know the inner thoughts, motivations, and emotions of Hamilton, just describe his observable actions. If you do want to get more heavily into the inner workings of Hamilton the man, then use not only his lectures but his letters. Remember too that wikipedia is not for original WP:SYNTH synthesis of material, which is almost unavoidable when *only* referring to primary sources (like Hamilton's own 19th century writings). Instead, also use secondary sources written by historians who already make the claims that you want to make yourself. This article has a lot of potential, and its problems are almost entirely due to being new to wikipedia procedures -- that is, they are all easily fixed, but it may take a little time. JackSchmidt (talk) 19:03, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I took the liberty of copying and paisting the two last sections of this article into the new history of quaternions article. To be honest I am more interested in working on an article about classical quaternian notation than cronicaling the history.

I think that it should be left to the historical article to demonstrate the enormous influence Hamilton had over classical quaternion notation. So in my most recent edit I have removed the names of persons, and left only their ideas. If people want to who and when, ideas came about, they should read it in a history article. If they want to know about a historical notation, then this is the place they should come.

Thanks for the encouragement. I plan to work hard to document this article to show that I am not making up some new notation here, but rather cataloging some rather interesting 19th century information.

Hobojaks (talk) 01:55, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Does this belong some place else

I moved a lot of text into history of quaternions article. I don't think that it most of it fits in to an article about history rather than an article about a historical notation.

I first suggested that this be done in this talk page, and then did it some time later when there were no objections.

Hobojaks (talk) 01:59, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Removed reference to radius vector.

Before Hamilton representing a point in Cartesian Space as a radius vector did not exist yet.^{[citation needed]}

This sentence was poorly written and did not contribute much to the article which is supposed to be about the vector idea of classical quaternions.

I hope that no one objects to this little edit. I would be happy to put into the article someplace if some could verify it. But maybe not in this spot especially now that some new text with direct verifiable quotes have been added.

[edit] This article urgently needs to be divided!

There are two different issues.

The first is what were classical quaternions. It would explain classical notation, classic structure, and maybe how they differed from the early modern forms of vector analysis that replaced them as far as main stream use around the turn of the century.

The second is who and when.

Who and when would be about names of people and events and dates in the history of quaternions.

Inside of who and when should go an in depth history longer than the one offered as the brief history on the main quaternion page for those interested in more information in this long and facinating subject.

Also unlike classical quaternion notation, now of interest to those attempting to read and understand old text books, the history of quaternions has gone on into the 20th and 21st centuries where ideas about quaternions are expressed by game developers in the latest programing languages.

So are there any objections to me doing a little more work on dividing this overly long article into two parts?

Right now it is about two different things?

Hobojaks (talk) 05:37, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Classical hamilton quaternions now has more than a dozen citations

This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (March 2008)

I feel that it is now very possible that there exist sections within this article that can no longer be considered original research but have plenty of references.

I agree that there are sections within the article that still have this problem and suggest that these be marked individually instead of the entire article.

I have marked two of them which continue to be particulary problematic.

[edit] The plauge of modern notation

Friends the plauge of modern vector notation has snuck into this article.

Where I had written A "cross" B someone put A X B to mean the modern cross product.

We need some way to distinguish between the modern cross product and the classical quaternion product.

May I suggest that when ever i, j, and k are modern and not classical that in this article they be shown in a different color, perhaps read. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hobojaks (talk • contribs) 06:06, 28 January 2008 (UTC)