On 12/12/13 15:31, Don wrote:
I don't think Imaginary should exist at all. Mathematically, it's nonsense.
It's exactly like defining a NegativeInteger. It has horrible properties, such
as, it's not closed under multiplication!
I don't think there are many applications for pure imaginary numbers, I tried to
come up with one but failed. Kahan only provides one example in his paper, and
it's contrived. It eliminates one subtlety but introduces far more. In practice
it is always far better to just operate directly on the real and imaginary
parts.
Well, there have been discussions and requests for it recently because of the
errors that can arise when you take 2 numbers, one with a purely imaginary part,
and multiply -- which arise out of the fact that then you have to contend with a
0 * something calculation. AFAICS there are also some benefits of precision
that one can gain for some calculations.
