Rethinking quaternions

the long version

Quaternion multiplication can be used to rotate vectors in three-dimensions. Therefore, in computer graphics, quaternions have three principal applications: to increase speed and reduce storage for calculations involving rotations, to avoid distortions arising from numerical inaccuracies caused by floating point computations with rotations, and to interpolate between two rotations for key frame animation. Yet while the formal algebra of quaternions is well-known in the graphics community, the derivations of the formulas for this algebra and the geometric principles underlying this algebra are not well understood.