Quote Originally Posted by The Ceej View Post
And Tavrobel, I just spent a whole paragraph explaining how i doesn't exist and why and you turn around and tell me it does because what is it for? It makes no sense. The only reason i was invented was to solve equations which have no valid answer. Well, if you have to make up numbers which don't exist to get an answer, you have no answer. My brother, as I've previously stated, is a reputable mathematics teacher and refuses to teach imaginary numbers for many of the same reasons I refuse to acknowledge their existence.
Actually <i>i</i> was postulated to correct the fact that there exist equations with complex roots that aren't solvable in the real numbers. Because R is flawed and is a subset of C, C is a more complete (not more flawed) number set. I'd also like to point out that no negative number n exists such that sqrt(n) is a member of R.

I don't know what maths your brother teaches, but if he tells his students that complex or negative numbers don't exist he had better have a watertight alternative set of number theories.