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Feb212007

The drawback of popularizing science - and how come some folks are flummoxed by math?

Filed under Uncategorized by david brooks at 7:52 am

UNH professor emeritus Paul Nahin

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    I just found your blog and find it very interesting. My husband and I have a podcast where we talk about history with respect to architecture and engineering called aspire at szilverwolf.com. Please check it out if you would like. I am finding that there are only very select groups of people interested in our subject choice. I was not interested in history in engineering school either. I think that had to do with a busy schedule though. The "Carl Sagan Syndrome," mentioned above is also very upsetting. There has to be someway to inspire our students into science! I will have to check out this book. Well I love the article!
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    I find the subject of 'imaginary numbers' fascinating, and I'd like more explanation, tho I admit formulas would leave me flummoxed (to borrow your most excellent choice of words). Positive and negative numbers form a sort of linear progression, right? So-called imaginary numbers must not fit into that line anywhere, or they would be regular numbers, so where are they, in relation to it? And do they have anything to do with quantum uncertainty? It's all too much for my bitty liberal arts brain, but, as I said, fascinating.
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    Think of the number line going left-to-right, as you always have. "Imaginary" numbers don't fit anywhere on that line. They have their own line - think of it as being at right angles to the traditional number line, and intersecting it. Just as you can't say whether a point at (1,1) on a grid is "bigger" than a point at (-1,1), you can't say that sqrt of -1 is "bigger" than plain old -1; it's just different. In fact, depicting complex numbers - which are part real and and part imaginary - as points on a 2-dimensional grid was one of the key breakthroughs in the field.
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    All I know is there ae only THREE kinds of people out there....
    Those that know how to add, and those that don't.
    So there!

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