this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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No. Imaginary numbers have the worst name. Like the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment it was something meant to mock the concept originally but stuck once real applications were found. Imaginary and complex numbers describe very real processes in nature and are not just some weird artifact of trying to get the square root of a negative number.
Here is an interesting video on the topic that also covers some of the applications used to describe things in nature. https://youtu.be/cUzklzVXJwo
If you prefer text here is an article listing some. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/maths/applications-of-imaginary-numbers-in-real-life/
I agree, because really all numbers are imaginary. Numbers are also wonderfully useful for describing nature, and it's amazing how what might start as a quest for completeness and elegance ends up reflecting something about the real world. Each extension on our use of numbers is an augmentation, an extended toolkit to solve different problems, but doesn't negate anything which went earlier. For example finding the roots of a polynomial often represents a problem where complex solutions aren't applicable, and "no solution" is the more meaningful result. One kind of mathematics may be bigger and more complete than another, but that doesn't make it better or more true. It just depends on what you need from it.