>>You two are both math savants so maybe one of you can explain something to me. It is i, the square root of negative 1. Dumbo me finally asked a professor about it. I said the square of anything is a positive. He said that's true in theory but i makes possible many theorems. That was when I knew I had no trajectory in advanced mathematics.
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>>Tamar, are you there? You have a PhD in math. Maybe you can explain it to me in terms a layman can understand.
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>First, my PhD is in Computer Science, not math. As for i, there's a reason they call them imaginary numbers. It's simple a construct that makes a whole lot of math work. Can't think of an analogy at the moment, but I know there are other such things around.
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>Tamar
I wonder if this would help: http://betterexplained.com/articles/a-visual-intuitive-guide-to-imaginary-numbers/