Submitted by Tharsis101 t3_10nn59i in explainlikeimfive
macedonianmoper t1_j6b9mpy wrote
Reply to comment by Genshed in ELI5: Why do imaginary numbers even need to exist? by Tharsis101
Ah I see, then it's totally understandable, unlike fractions and negatives they don't really serve a purpose for day to day.
Education changes from place to place, I see a lot of people apparently had calculus in highschool while I only started it in college (this was only a few years ago), I did however learn about imaginary numbers in high school
lunatickoala t1_j6civq4 wrote
It's interesting how "useful day to day" can change so much in context. Logarithms are the basis for how slide rules work so in the time before personal computers when logarithms were more useful then than today.
And while most people don't actively use logarithms in their day to day life, they are incredibly important because human perception is generally logarithmic, not linear. The decibel scale is logarithmic because of this. There's even some evidence to suggest that logarithmic thinking might even be more natural. https://news.mit.edu/2012/thinking-logarithmically-1005
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