I'm with Steph WRT the practical applications-- if it is imaginary and not real, how does it help us make a curve in real life? Or what have you...
I don't give a good gorram about relevant, Wash. Or objective. And I ain't so afraid of losing something that I ain't gonna try to have it. You and I would make one beautiful baby. And I want to meet that child one day. Period.
Zoe ,'Heart Of Gold'
Natter 63: Life after PuppyCam
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
Sophia Brooks - Jun 29, 2009 12:08:53 pm PDT #26545 of 30000
Cats to become a rabbit should gather immediately now here
Polter-Cow - Jun 29, 2009 12:10:25 pm PDT #26546 of 30000
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!
(And I still don't understand how *imaginary* numbers work in *real* application.)
Because i2 is a real number. Also this.
Gudanov - Jun 29, 2009 12:10:30 pm PDT #26547 of 30000
Coding and Sleeping
And I still don't understand how *imaginary* numbers work in *real* application.
I don't remember very well. I think you can use them to introduce a new dimension to a calculation. I believe one example is introducing phase into the math of AC electrical circuits.
Polter-Cow - Jun 29, 2009 12:12:18 pm PDT #26548 of 30000
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!
Yep, that's the example Wikipedia gives.
Kat - Jun 29, 2009 12:12:35 pm PDT #26549 of 30000
"I keep to a strict diet of ill-advised enthusiasm and heartfelt regret." Leigh Bardugo
Argh! Mathiness!
I'm with Steph. You math folks can have some punctuation, but please leave the letters alone.
Gudanov - Jun 29, 2009 12:13:24 pm PDT #26550 of 30000
Coding and Sleeping
if it is imaginary and not real
It's still a number, it's just not in the set of real numbers so it got tagged with a misleading name. Some people, I'm not saying who, are bigoted against numbers that aren't in the real set.
Theodosia - Jun 29, 2009 12:15:57 pm PDT #26551 of 30000
'we all walk this earth feeling we are frauds. The trick is to be grateful and hope the caper doesn't end any time soon"
Look at it this way, negative numbers are, in real world terms, imaginary in that you can't, for example, have "negative three apples".
Some numbers are just more imaginary than others.
Gudanov - Jun 29, 2009 12:17:47 pm PDT #26552 of 30000
Coding and Sleeping
I suppose you could have a negative apple, but if it touched anything you'd start tossing around battleships.
A medium sized negative apple appears to have a yield of 1.5 megatons of destructive force. About 3 megatons of actual energy.
tommyrot - Jun 29, 2009 12:19:42 pm PDT #26553 of 30000
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.
A negative apple is what you have when Guido the loan shark is about to stop by and pick up the apple you owe him.
Jesse - Jun 29, 2009 12:20:17 pm PDT #26554 of 30000
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.
Math is kind of an easy subject to be able to to see how these different cultures though about things very differently than we did. There's zero. There's the idea that unit fractions are the only possibility. Negative numbers. Irrational numbers. My personal favorite, infinity. Each one really requires a paradigm shift. It's hard to think about, that they didn't just not use zero, they never conceived of the possibility of something like zero.
Yeah, really interesting.