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If I were in charge of math, I’d call them placeholder numbers, or something like that. They’re there to get you to a solution, but the solution to a legit prob
by 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
If I were in charge of math, I’d call them placeholder numbers, or something like that. They’re there to get you to a solution, but the solution to a legit problem will be a legit number.
It allows you to use the same algorithm to solve polynomials, and stuff like that, but you end up with these placeholders that will vanish along the way to the final solution.
- ravi-delia 5y agoExcept for quantum mechanics, where solutions to legit problems are complex, just to name one
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y agoThe wave function can be viewed as another placeholder which gets you to your “legit” probability distributions over observables.
- ravi-delia 5y agoOnly if you go in for a hidden-variable theory, which is absolutely cool but means you have to give up a lot of properties you'd really expect the universe to have