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Noxide
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A little clarification is required for the following techniqueTHE TECHNIQUE
Given a surface z = f(x,y), and some point Q in R3 (not on the surface)
The point P on the surface for which the distance from P(x, y, f(x,y)) to Q is the shortest distance from the surface to Q (i.e. vector PQ has minimal length) is determined by minimizing the squared length (or PQ dot PQ)of vector PQ.
A REMARK
The next paragraph seems dauntingly long, I think it asks 2 questions...
THE QUESTIONS
That's fine and dandy as techniques go, but I'm having trouble understanding exactly why we do that to the squared length. I can understand wanting to minimize the length... but minimizing the dot product/squared length seems foreign to me. Clearly there's some gap in my knowledge as to why this is done. Also, we are finding the minimum of the new function g(x,y) = PQ dot PQ by setting it's first order partial derivatives w.r.t x and y equal to zero, but we then substitute those same values of x and y into the surface f(x,y)... I understand that x and y carry through, but it just seems odd that the values of x and y for which g(x,y) is a minimum (i'm not sure if that's always the case, but the solution manual seems to indicate it is) will yield a point P whose length is minimal to Q.
Given a surface z = f(x,y), and some point Q in R3 (not on the surface)
The point P on the surface for which the distance from P(x, y, f(x,y)) to Q is the shortest distance from the surface to Q (i.e. vector PQ has minimal length) is determined by minimizing the squared length (or PQ dot PQ)of vector PQ.
A REMARK
The next paragraph seems dauntingly long, I think it asks 2 questions...
THE QUESTIONS
That's fine and dandy as techniques go, but I'm having trouble understanding exactly why we do that to the squared length. I can understand wanting to minimize the length... but minimizing the dot product/squared length seems foreign to me. Clearly there's some gap in my knowledge as to why this is done. Also, we are finding the minimum of the new function g(x,y) = PQ dot PQ by setting it's first order partial derivatives w.r.t x and y equal to zero, but we then substitute those same values of x and y into the surface f(x,y)... I understand that x and y carry through, but it just seems odd that the values of x and y for which g(x,y) is a minimum (i'm not sure if that's always the case, but the solution manual seems to indicate it is) will yield a point P whose length is minimal to Q.
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