On Thursday, April 27, 2017 at 9:36:26 PM UTC-7, Rustom Mody wrote: > On Friday, April 28, 2017 at 9:36:02 AM UTC+5:30, Mike Reveile wrote: > > On Wednesday, April 19, 2017 at 9:44:15 AM UTC-7, Rurpy wrote: > > > On 04/18/2017 04:34 PM, Chris Angelico wrote: > > > > On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 8:28 AM, Ben Finney wrote: > > > >> Chris Angelico writes: > > > >> > > <<snip>> > > > > Interesting thread... but volatile. > > I find imaginary numbers to be quite useful for understanding real > > problems... but I do not try to make them real. They are simply useful ways > > of looking at the real world. > > I do the same thing when I think of gods and monsters... useful, but not > > real. > > > Lets call real in the math sense realₘ — ie real-number, imaginary-umber etc > Lets call real in the ordinary sense realₒ —ie having existence > > History suggests that realₘ was a defiant attempt by mathematicians > to cock a snook at other mathematicians who contended that the set ℝ was > un-realₒ > > Interestingly these arguments led to the establishment of the field of > computer > science: http://blog.languager.org/2015/03/cs-history-0.html > > Personal Note: As a 11-year old reading George Gamov 1-2-3-∞, I had a great > deal of trouble understanding imaginary numbers. > Later when studying it in math-class I managed to get along with them by > playing by the symbol-manipulation rules > Much later I understood why I did not understand: The word 'imaginary' was > cueing > me — subconsciously of course — > This is not real... > This is not true... > This is not... > What the &*^%#% is this?? > > And still later... learnt from Dijkstra the term 'lousy-language' and its > consequences
I can measure a Pineapple... by weight, volume, color, taste, smell, ripeness... but none of these numbers are the pineapple. They only help me relate to the pineapple. In this way Math itself (and the entire realm of computer science) is unreal. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
