Series

Duality — the series

3 essays on one idea, from the one that introduces it to the one that assumes the rest.
  1. points, joinedlines, metevery incidence survives, worst 9.1e-1630 of 30

    A point and a line are one object

    Every projective statement has a partner got by swapping the words point and line, and the partner is true whenever the original is. Run on this collection's own Desargues configuration, all thirty of its incidences survive the exchange to 5 × 10⁻¹⁶ — and three of the dual's ten points land at infinity, which is a fact about where the drawing sits on the page rather than about the theorem.

    part 1 · foundations
  2. horizonABCDany vertexon the groundin the picturelength AB1.00011.3930ratio AB:CD0.56670.6837cross-ratio1.31681.3168correct from 26 cm, at 160 mm wide34° across

    Four lines have a cross-ratio

    The cross-ratio is introduced as a property of four points on a line. Its dual — four lines through a point carry the same number, and any transversal reads it back — is not a second theorem. It is why the first one is true: four rays from an eye are a pencil, every picture of them is a section of that pencil, and a quantity belonging to the pencil cannot depend on which section was taken.

    part 3 · foundations
  3. horizoncorrect from 12 cm, at 160 mm wide67° across

    The horizon has a pole

    Every other duality in this collection is a matrix somebody picked. A calibrated camera fixes one nobody picked, and under it the horizon of a plane and the vanishing point of that plane's normal are pole and polar — to 2.7 × 10⁻¹² pixels. Run backwards, those two marks give the focal length with no known length, no right angle and no square anywhere in the scene.

    part 4 · foundations

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