This came up in a comedy show here last night (Good News Week). One contestant was arguing for the return of words like 'barren' and 'spinster'.

My parents' marriage license lists my mother as "spinster." She was 26. In 1967.

For using imaginary numbers in electronics stuff, they're basically used because it makes the calculations easier. If you let the voltage across a resister be a real quantity, the voltage across a capacitor be a negative imaginary quantity, and the voltage across in inductor be a positive imaginary quantity, then the way those voltages work together is exactly the way that real and imaginary numbers work together. You could do all the same calculations without using complex numbers, but it's just easier to do it with the complex numbers.

the way those voltages work together is exactly the way that real and imaginary numbers work together.

But, see, is it not INSANE that that is true? Right? It's insane? MATH IS CRAZY (AWESOME).

You could do all the same calculations without using complex numbers, but it's just easier to do it with the complex numbers.

This sounds very counterintuitive

It's insane that any math at all applies to the real world, when you get right down to it.

To mathematicians, anyway. It's a constant source of amazement.

You could do all the same calculations without using complex numbers, but it's just easier to do it with the complex numbers.

This sounds very counterintuitive

It's because, if you don't use complex numbers, then you've got to keep track of two dimensions separately. With a complex number like 3+2i, you've got the "2" information and the "3" information in the same number. If you weren't using complex numbers, then you'd have to have the 2 and the 3 separately, so that now you've got two numbers instead of just one.

It's insane that any math at all applies to the real world, when you get right down to it.

Exactly!

Have you read Big Bang, by Simon Singh? There's this amazing bit where he talks about a group that did some calculations that predicted a specific wavelength of radiation/light that, if the Big Bang had occurred, would be be omnipresent.

And then another independent group detected it, and it was the exact wavelength the other group had calculated.

Ah, here it is: discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation.

That's the news from the far side of two. I think billytea owes us an update from the other end of the infant spectrum.

I'm about to hit...

THE TEEN YEARS

A week from Saturday I will be the mother of a teenage boy. With the girl not far behind.

Hold me.

I have not read that particular book, but I've come across that story.

Be strong, Barb!

Euler's identity still makes me go, "Oh, holy wow!" It's just so...neat.