and also ELI16 what a an imaginary number is and how it works in real life

Question

and also ELI16 what a an imaginary number is and how it works in real life

In: Mathematics

Answer 1

To add to the other responses, there isn’t anything actually “imaginary” about imaginary numbers. Descartes (who coined the term) did think of them that way:

> the true roots as well as the false [roots] are not always real; but sometimes only imaginary [quantities]; that is to say, one can always imagine as many of them in each equation as I said; but there is sometimes no quantity that corresponds to what one imagines..

…but note that he is talking about “false” roots as well; those are the negative ones. To him negative numbers were false as well, and for imaginary numbers you had to imagine them.

Now most of us are pretty happy with negative numbers, but to Descartes they were almost as weird and silly as imaginary ones.