Yeah “imaginary” isn’t a good name and doesn’t convey what they are. No one is learning about imaginary numbers before being familiar with the Cartesian plane, they’re literally just another number line perpendicular to the reals. Ironically, one could call them “normal” numbers for that reason. But really any synonym for “perpendicular” would be better than “imaginary”. I think “orthogonal numbers” has a nice ring to it.
let’s be honest.
they could have called it complex numbers and it would save the teachers a lot of questions.
I think you may be unaware of how majestically terrible mathheads are at naming things
if they were good with words they wouldn’t be doing maths
Feynman was good with both…
Yeah “imaginary” isn’t a good name and doesn’t convey what they are. No one is learning about imaginary numbers before being familiar with the Cartesian plane, they’re literally just another number line perpendicular to the reals. Ironically, one could call them “normal” numbers for that reason. But really any synonym for “perpendicular” would be better than “imaginary”. I think “orthogonal numbers” has a nice ring to it.