phcorcoran

joined 2 years ago

As imaginary numbers (square root is negative) are useful, is there any mathematical use for an imaginary number that, when multiplied by zero, gives a non-zero result? in c/askscience@lemmy.world

[–] phcorcoran@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

Awesome, thank you for taking the time to explore it more, that makes sense to me

As imaginary numbers (square root is negative) are useful, is there any mathematical use for an imaginary number that, when multiplied by zero, gives a non-zero result? in c/askscience@lemmy.world

[–] phcorcoran@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

I'm curious, couldn't we define z as only 1/0? Then 2/0 would have to be factored to 2*(1/0) first and it would solve this specific example of things breaking. I haven't done advanced math in a while but your comment picked my curiosity haha

I remember 1/0 is pretty important in limits and stuff, it just seemed to me that this specific example seems not too hard to resolve