I’m glad you commented this (because the replies are encouraging me). I feel similarly to you in that I never had someone explain i to me in a way that I could

I’m glad you commented this (because the replies are encouraging me). I feel similarly to you in that I never had someone explain i to me in a way that I could intuitively grasp. I’m realizing now that this likely had more to do with not having a teacher who could explain it! Also, shoutout to non-Euclidean math for confusing me to no end and making me think I’m dumb (but also probably suffering from the same problem of not having a great teacher). I’ve finally gotten to a point where I’m the one writing the confusing symbols for others to read after publication. Here’s something I never really realized before. Confusing equations, maybe more so in informally mathematic disciplines like computer science, are mostly an alternative way of trying to explain a complex paradigm. In a paper that I’m working on right now, we basically state something in plain English and then create an equation to communicate it in an alternative way. It’s a formal representation, but more than that, it’s just an attempt to communicate something that is inherently confusing. It’s an oversimplification to say this, but: I think a lot of the confusion stems from humanity having discovered most of the simple stuff, what’s left to be communicated is inherently confusing.