Ah, but there are *other* women (who shall remain nameless but might be curly blondes who are good with words) who are somewhat ignoramuses when it comes to math and yet still find brains Teh HOTT, and award bonus points if the brainy person can actually make the math comprehensible.

I admire the ability to do The Math (Emily is my hero) but I really hear "Blah..blah..blah...Erin...blah...blah." Science, on the other hand, is neato, and except for the mathy parts, I love to hear about it. Escpeacially physics. Physics is sex-ay.

It's amazing how much more I like math and science now that I'm not forced to do a gazillion word problems.

Word. I just had to Do Math for this job I applied for, teaching for Princeton Review for the GRE, and my brain just went "ARRGGHHH!"

I tried, I really did, but I had a 25 minutes time limit, and geometry? Algebra? PI and square roots, for fucks sake?! NO WAY.

If anyone could actually explain the number i to me in such a way that I could comprehend an actual practical application of it, I would swoon.

Yes, I said "the number i." Somehow, i is a number. I even know what it is -- the square root of -1. What I don't get is what it can be used for. Because it's NOT REAL!

beathen needs to change her tag, and also come visit me.

This has nothing with her being good at math.

Okay, maybe a little.

ETA: Well, crap, she has now changed her tag. Now to take care of the other part.

I think the number i was developed to torture young minds and scare us away from anything math related. I still like math despite this because that section of math class was blanked out in my brain for self-preservation.

Yes, I said "the number i." Somehow, i is a number. I even know what it is -- the square root of -1. What I don't get is what it can be used for. Because it's NOT REAL!

Nope, it's imaginary. It does not, in fact, exist. But it helps you get from point A to point B sometimes. It's a mathematical wormhole.

I understand a, b, c, d and x...but i?

No, no.

Hey PC! I wasn't sure I'd catch you on here at the same time I was (but since I've been online all day, well, the chances were good).

I will definately come out for a visit. You only live, like, an hour and a half away!

Imaginary numbers are used in some things like modeling fluid dynamics, and some other physics things with looking at other things that move like waves or fluids. I can't really give a concrete example of how, though -- most of what I've been working on has been theoretical stuff, and I haven't looked at things like that much.