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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list