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A comment on A Visual, Intuitive Guide to Imaginary Numbers (2007). Parent comment

Re:A Visual, Intuitive Guide to Imaginary Numbers (2007) by mkl on Friday August 10, 2018 @06:55PM (#17737290)
Except they can be negative, and relate to area for 2D, not volume, and would require defining volume in dimensions higher than 3, which is not necessarily obvious or intuitive for beginners.

"Signed scaling factor" is more general, and some courses (e.g. ones I teach on) use that to introduce the idea.

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Re:A Visual, Intuitive Guide to Imaginary Numbers (2007) by ajkjk on Saturday August 11, 2018 @12:51AM (#17738410)
I think that 'N-volume' including area, volume, and higher dimensional analogs is pretty understandable to a student. The fact that it's signed is more subtle, but still is not a big problem. The benefits to intuition of calling it 'volume' far outweigh the negatives.

Anyway, 'scaling factor' still leaves the signs mysterious.

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