Is this equation supposed to mean something to us? I mean, does it show up elsewhere other than finding the distance to a line?
Heisenberg
what if it's in 3d? N could be in any direction in the plane that is vertical to the line
dranzer
I would like to point out that N needs to be a unit vector for the calculation to work. It took me a moment to realise why N^T N disappeared as I was just thinking about it as some random matrix.
keenan
@Azure It's supposed to mean... the distance to a line! Sometimes you need that quantity! Otherwise, no, it doesn't give the answer to life, the universe, and everything. :-)
keenan
@Heisenberg Yeah, good question. Can you cook up a formula for the distance to a line in 3D? (How do you even represent a line in 3D?)
keenan
@dranzer Excellent point. Yes, $\mathbf{N}$ here has to be the unit normal, otherwise things are a bit more complicated.
Is this equation supposed to mean something to us? I mean, does it show up elsewhere other than finding the distance to a line?
what if it's in 3d? N could be in any direction in the plane that is vertical to the line
I would like to point out that N needs to be a unit vector for the calculation to work. It took me a moment to realise why N^T N disappeared as I was just thinking about it as some random matrix.
@Azure It's supposed to mean... the distance to a line! Sometimes you need that quantity! Otherwise, no, it doesn't give the answer to life, the universe, and everything. :-)
@Heisenberg Yeah, good question. Can you cook up a formula for the distance to a line in 3D? (How do you even represent a line in 3D?)
@dranzer Excellent point. Yes, $\mathbf{N}$ here has to be the unit normal, otherwise things are a bit more complicated.