Re:Imaginary Numbers May Be Essential for Describing Reality
by rimiform on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @10:42AM
(#26329808)
That's great, but my intuition fails me when I try to consider what it would mean for the answer to some question to be a complex number. It's even worse for quaternions, because I can't even use the spatial analogue there.
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Re:Imaginary Numbers May Be Essential for Describing Reality
by munchbunny on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @11:09AM
(#26330281)
I think about it this way: the complex-ness of the number is really just a representational trick. What it means, intuitively, depends on what the question is really asking and why the behaviors of math on complex numbers is well-suited to representing the answer, and that reason might change based on the context.