On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 7:21 PM, Ken Dickey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Friday 24 October 2008 12:34:21 John Cowan wrote: >> Ken Dickey scripsit: >> > The naive reading (for a non-English speaker) would be that +2i is >> > somehow less real than +inf.0 . 8^) >> >> That's just what it is: less real -- in fact, not real at all. Non-real >> numbers aren't magnitudes, and < does not and should not accept them >> as arguments. > > Scheme seems to think so.E.g.: > (magnitude 2+3i) => 3.605551275463989 > (magnitude +2i) => 2 > > This is just the distance to the origin (0,0) in 2space. It is very well > defined. > > Without complex _numbers_ you can't do a lot of math (e.g. in electronics). > > Is the point 2+3i more real to you than +2i? Are 2d points less real > than "points on the number line"? > > I think you made my point. 8^) > > In 3space you can do even more! ;^) > -KenD
Ken, I think you're missing John's point, and some crucial mathematical terminology. "Real numbers" are a specific, proper subset of the complex numbers - specifically, those without an imaginary component. In this context, the terms "real", "imaginary", and "complex" have nothing to do with their usual, non-technical meaning. Saying that 2+3i isn't a real number doesn't mean that it isn't a number. -- Carl Eastlund _______________________________________________ r6rs-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.r6rs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/r6rs-discuss
