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A comment on Lessons I Wish I Had Learned Before Teaching Differential Equations (1997) [pdf]. Parent comment

Re:Lessons I Wish I Had Learned Before Teaching Differential... by archgoon on Monday September 04, 2017 @03:50AM (#15166470)
>We can use complex numbers to describe a 2-dimensional number-space with a single digit.

No we can't. What digit represents 1 + 1j?

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Re:Lessons I Wish I Had Learned Before Teaching Differential... by jacobolus on Monday September 04, 2017 @07:05AM (#15167295)
There are many ways to do this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex-base_system

But it seems clear that the grandparent poster was using the wrong word (“digit”) and likely meant something like “we can conceive of a 2-dimensional quantity as a single number-like entity”.

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