| ▲ | cess11 5 hours ago | |
How come? They are part real numbers, what would you call the other part? | ||
| ▲ | creata 15 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | |
Iirc Gauss suggested "lateral numbers". Not the worst idea, but it's too late now. | ||
| ▲ | maxbond 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
We could've called the imaginaries "orthogonals", "perpendiculars", "complications", "atypicals", there's a million other options. I like the idea that a number is complex because it has a "complicated component". | ||
| ▲ | srean 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
Twisted ? Rotated ? | ||
| ▲ | d--b an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | |
I mean that they're not really numbers. Usually they explain it something like: oh, at first people didn't know what 2-5 added up to, but then we invented negative numbers. Well, complex numbers are that but for square roots of negative numbers. But that's a completely misleading way to explain these things. Complex numbers aren't numbers aren't numbers really. | ||