Calculator test

[naddy]

(12-09-2024 11:44 PM)dm319 Wrote:  I'm probably more a complex-number-denier but I think I'm starting to come round.

I think for most people even in technical fields, complex numbers are an algebraic curiosity that was briefly touched on in some math class and then more or less forgotten. They are extensively used in electrical engineering, though, principally because electrical engineers deal with sinusoidal functions all the time, and moving those into the complex plane via Euler's formula turns out to be more convenient than lugging around sines and cosines.

There can be some mild cases of culture shock, like when computer science students are sent to the EE department's introductory signal processing class, and the lecturer, while scribbling the first formula on the blackboard, casually mentions that everything will be done in complex of course.

Buying an HP-15C CE and revisiting the Owner's Handbook made me realize that I'm still comfortable dealing with complex numbers, but frankly, I haven't had any practical use for them in decades.

Getting back to the test at the start of the thread: You generally know if the problem you're working involves complex numbers, and if it doesn't and you're suddenly looking at a complex result, then best case you skip it because it isn't physically interpretable, but more likely it signals that there's a mistake somewhere, so in practical terms that's like getting an ERROR.