On Friday, April 28, 2017 at 9:36:02 AM UTC+5:30, Mike Reveile wrote: > On Wednesday, April 19, 2017 at 9:44:15 AM UTC-7, Rurpy wrote: > > On 04/18/2017 04:34 PM, Chris Angelico wrote: > > > On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 8:28 AM, Ben Finney wrote: > > >> Chris Angelico writes: > > >> > <<snip>> > > Interesting thread... but volatile. > I find imaginary numbers to be quite useful for understanding real > problems... but I do not try to make them real. They are simply useful ways > of looking at the real world. > I do the same thing when I think of gods and monsters... useful, but not real.
Lets call real in the math sense realₘ — ie real-number, imaginary-umber etc Lets call real in the ordinary sense realₒ —ie having existence History suggests that realₘ was a defiant attempt by mathematicians to cock a snook at other mathematicians who contended that the set ℝ was un-realₒ Interestingly these arguments led to the establishment of the field of computer science: http://blog.languager.org/2015/03/cs-history-0.html Personal Note: As a 11-year old reading George Gamov 1-2-3-∞, I had a great deal of trouble understanding imaginary numbers. Later when studying it in math-class I managed to get along with them by playing by the symbol-manipulation rules Much later I understood why I did not understand: The word 'imaginary' was cueing me — subconsciously of course — This is not real... This is not true... This is not... What the &*^%#% is this?? And still later... learnt from Dijkstra the term 'lousy-language' and its consequences -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
