Re: So what exactly is a complex number?

Carsten Haese wrote:
On Thu, 2007-08-30 at 20:11 -0500, Lamonte Harris wrote:
Like in math where you put letters that represent numbers for place
holders to try to find the answer type complex numbers?

Is English your native language? I'm having a hard time decoding your
question.


Here is a simple explanation (and it is not complete by a long shot).

A number by itself is called a "scalar". For example, when I say,
"I have 23 apples", the "23" is a scalar that just represents an
amount in this case.

One of the most common uses for Complex Numbers is in what are
called "vectors". In a vector, you have both an amount and
a *direction*. For example, I can say, "I threw 23 apples in the air
at a 45 degree angle". Complex Numbers let us encode both
the magnitude (23) and the direction (45 degrees) as a "number".

There are actually two ways to represent Complex Numbers.
One is called the "rectangular" form, the other the "polar"
form, but both do the same thing - they encode a vector.

Complex Numbers show up all over the place in engineering and
science problems. Languages like Python that have Complex Numbers
as a first class data type allow you do to *arithmetic* on them
(add, subtract, etc.). This makes Python very useful when solving
problems for engineering, science, navigation, and so forth.


HTH,
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk tundra@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/
.