4 ms·
>> I honestly don't understand why complex numbers make people so angry. I think the reason is very simple: the name. Every time you talk about "real" numbers
by injb 5y ago
>> I honestly don't understand why complex numbers make people so angry.
I think the reason is very simple: the name. Every time you talk about "real" numbers and "imaginary" numbers, you are telling people implicitly that there is something less legitimate about the imaginary numbers. To put it another way, you're saying that they're not real, when all you really mean is that they're not Real.
Some people just get it quickly: names are just labels, and they don't matter. Others take a long time to realize that, and some never do. Some of us are hard wired to read into the names we give things.
- voldacar 5y agoYeah the shitty terminology can be blamed on Descartes. I think Gauss wanted to rename them "lateral numbers" but I guess that never stuck
- dvsfish 5y agoWow, genius. This would have personally helped immensely
- octoberfranklin 5y agoTo be fair, they aren't ordered, which some people consider to be the most essential property of a number. The transfinite numbers, hyperreal numbers, and surreal numbers each have a total ordering -- a transitive antisymmetric relation. But the complex "numbers" do not have this. The "complex field" would be a better name. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surreal_number https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surreal_number https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfinite_number https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfinite_number https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreal_number https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreal_number
- forum_ghost 5y agoThese are not scary enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenic_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenic_number
- charcircuit 5y agoImaginary numbers have an order. 1i is less than 2i for example. You are thinking of complex numbers.
- onethought 5y agoThis is a strange train of thought, isn't the entire field of mathematics a conceptual framework? i.e it's entirely imaginary.
- forum_ghost 5y agoNot entirely. Some are searching for signs of ET or God in irrational numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenic_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenic_number
- onethought 5y agoYour evidence that it isn’t completely made up is people are using it to search for other things that are completely made up?