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/sci/ - Science & Math

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9593910 No.9593910 [Reply] [Original]

I have my doubts about whether we are approaching math in a fundamentally inefficient way because of pic related. As an extension of the concept of number these guys behave in such an idiosyncratic way that I think, what if we just threw out basic arithmetic and started from the ground up so that the behavior of real numbers would better coincide with the behavior of imaginary numbers. Have any papers been written on this possibility?

>> No.9593917

>>9593910
>these guys behave in such an idiosyncratic way
What do you mean?

>> No.9593926

>>9593910
the complex numbers are a well defined algebraic completion of the real numbers, which are uncontroversial.

>> No.9593936

Lol what are ypu even on about

>> No.9593940

>>9593917
real numbers get larger when you raise them to higher and higher powers. Imaginary numbers get caught in this repeating cycle and don't tend to any kind of limit. I'm definitely not saying there is anything contrived or wrong about imaginary numbers but rather that perhaps the idea of two apples plus three apples being 5 apples is a rather crude and specious way of understanding mathematics and if something more sophisticated and consistent is viable.

>> No.9593943
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9593943

>>9593926
DELET THIS REEEEEEEE

>> No.9593962

>>9593940
Easy way to visualise it is by thinking that when two complex numbers are multiplied, their lengths multiply and their angles relative to the positive real axis add.

>> No.9593969

>>9593940
>real numbers get larger when you raise them to higher and higher powers. Imaginary numbers get caught in this repeating cycle and don't tend to any kind of limit.

What do you mean? It's not that different from how negative numbers behave when you do that, i.e, (-2)^n which keeps jumping from one side to another as n tends to infinity.

>> No.9593978

>>9593962
I get it, I really do but what I'm saying is writing it down like (n+i) is kind of like if I look at myself in the mirror and say okay this is me+penis. Like why are we relegating my genitalia into its own category when clearly the penis is a constituent of me? So I'm saying maybe there is a singular entity that better communicates all aspects of a number. And actually if that idea is unprecedented I would have written it off but assumed some academic had investigated it.

>> No.9593982

>>9593940
>the idea of two apples plus three apples being 5 apples is a rather crude and specious way of understanding mathematics
And your alternate theory is what exactly?

>> No.9593989

>>9593982
I don't have one but I thought somebody probably did.

>> No.9593991

>>9593978
>So I'm saying maybe there is a singular entity that better communicates all aspects of a number.
I'm not quire sure what you were thinking, but in this respect considering complex numbers as having real and imaginary aspects seems to fit your ''singular entity"

>> No.9593994

>>9593989
2+3=5 seems pretty reasonable to me, given our intuition and understanding of what each of the characters represents and means

>> No.9594017

>>9593994
You're missing my point. OF COURSE its reasonable because it gives the right answer in an intuitive way. But for instance we could just as well calculate everything by adding and immediately subtracting some constant and get the same result but just because we were getting the right answers wouldn't necessitate that we were doing things in the most ideal way.