trouble with complex numbers

Scott David Daniels Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org
Wed Aug 5 11:18:55 EDT 2009


alex23 wrote:
> Piet van Oostrum <p... at cs.uu.nl> wrote:
>> That should be z += 0j
> 
> Pardon my ignorance, but could anyone explain the rationale behind
> using 'j' to indicate the imaginary number (as opposed to the more
> intuitive 'i')?
> 
> (Not that I've had much call to use complex numbers but I'm
> curious....)
I think it explained in the complex math area, but basically EE types
use j, math types use i for exactly the same thing.  Since i is so
frequently and index in CS, and there is another strong convention,
why not let the EE types win?

--Scott David Daniels
Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org



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