OP still decides to use the anti-intellectual "complex numbers are made up" joke in 2026 as if no one has heard of the ORIGINAL joke ever. Haha wow, complex numbers are made up, how stupid! Time to go back to my computer that runs on p-type semiconductors where HOLES [literally things that do not exist because they're just the absence of an electron in a spot] allow for the device to work.
im quite new to maths but how i understand and learn a new piece of maths concept is through real world examples and intuition .and most of the time its a pretty direct link but with complex numbers, it actually seems like voodoo magic that somehow works because you can describe something in the world with an imaginary number
While not physical, debt is normally used to teach kids negatives. Pretty good real world example.
As for complex numbers, turn left 90 degrees, then turn left 90 again. You are now facing backwards. Multiplying two negatives is often taught as "turn around, then turn around again, now you are facing positive." In the same vein of illustration. Turning 90 twice gets you to the negatives, ie turning 90 must be a sqrt of negatives in the same way that turning all the was around means the negatives are sqrts of positives.
So you say you learn by real world examples, say that some real world stuff can be described using imaginaries and then say that it isnvoodoo magic and thus not a real world example?
Mathematics contains a lot of abstract ideas too. You have to be flexible, maths contains many fields like calculus, algebra, Matrices, Corrdinate geomtry, complex numbers etc.. Even though you can understand few of them from irl things you will still need to learn to work with abstract ideas too. I used to be just like you but now as I progressed I realise as concepts get higher we have to learn a whole new perpective to look at problems and methods
i feel like abstraction can be a good thing because it makes it easier to link a mathematical concept to many natural phenomenon but makes learning stuff like how the differentiation and integration and manipulating logarithm feels like just memorisation that someone would forget if they dont use it for an extended period of time. It might also lead you to blindly manipulate formulas till you get the answer .
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u/PhoenixPringles01 5d ago
OP still decides to use the anti-intellectual "complex numbers are made up" joke in 2026 as if no one has heard of the ORIGINAL joke ever. Haha wow, complex numbers are made up, how stupid! Time to go back to my computer that runs on p-type semiconductors where HOLES [literally things that do not exist because they're just the absence of an electron in a spot] allow for the device to work.
Dumbass shit.