If it doesn’t exist, why and how do we use it?
In: Mathematics
Negative numbers don’t exist either – you can have 3 apples or 5 apples, but you can’t have -3 apples. However, that doesn’t mean they can’t be useful. If I told you that after graduating college that I have a net worth of -£50,000 , you know exactly what that means.
There don’t exist any £-1 coins, and I can’t give you 50,000 of them, but negative numbers are still *useful* in talking about debt because the mathematical rules of debt match those of negative numbers. For example, if I have £5000 of debt and then I manage to earn £6000, I can pay off my debt and have £1000 left over. This matches the fact that -5000 + 6000 = 1000 .
There are many applications of imaginary numbers, depsite the fact that they don’t really “exist”, and they have these applications wherever the mathematical rules of imaginary numbers match those of a real situation. I’m sure there will be other replies to your post giving some example situations like this.
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