## Quotients

It seems to me that thinking of quotients as a fundamental operator is usually painful and unnecessary when the objects are almost anything other than real (or rational) numbers. Instead it is better to think of a quotient as a combination of the reciprocal and the product. A good example of this is complex numbers. Suppose that

$z=a+bi$
$w=c+di.$

Then, the usual rule for the quotient is that

$\displaystyle{z/w = \frac{ac+bd}{c^2+d^2} + i\frac{bc-ad}{c^2+d^2}}.$

This qualifies as non-memorizable. On the other hand, take the reciprocal of $w$

$\displaystyle{1/w = \frac{c-di}{c^2+d^2}}$.

This is simple enough (“the complex conjugate divided by the squared norm”), and we recover the rule for the quotient easily enough by multiplying with $z$.

The same thing holds true for derivatives. I’ve never been able to remember that quotient rule from high-school; Namely that if $f(x)=g(x)/h(h)$, then

$\displaystyle{f'(x) = \frac{h(x)g'(x)-h'(x)g(x)}{h(x)^2}}$

Ick. Instead, better to note that if $r(x) = 1/h(h)$ then

$\displaystyle{r'(x) = \frac{-h'(x)}{h(x)^2}},$

along with the standard rule for differentiating products, so that if $f(x)=g(x)/h(x)=g(x)r(x)$, then

$\displaystyle{f'(x) = g(x)r'(x)+g'(x)r(x)}$.

Another case would be the “matrix quotient” $B C^{-1}$. Of course, everyone already thinks of the matrix multiplication and inverse as separate operations– to do otherwise would be horrible– but I think that just proves the point…

(Although, I assume that computing $BC^{-1}$ as a single operation would be more numerically stable than first taking an explicit inverse. This might mean something to people who feel that mathematical notation ought to suggest an obvious stable implementation in IEEE floating point (if any).)