Comments on: Understanding Why Complex Multiplication Works

By: kalid

kalid — Thu, 31 May 2018 17:53:00 +0000

Great question. Let’s say we want to start at the origin (0, 0) and move to a new spot.

Regular x-y coordinates tell us how far left/right (x coordinate) and up/down (y coordinate) we go to get to the new spot. This is like driving a car in a city grid to the new spot by going horizontal, then vertical.
Polar coordinates tell us what angle to point (0 to 360) and how far to move along that trajectory (r, radius we move out). This is like shooting a bullet to the new spot (picking a direction and an amount of strength to use). Using sine/cosine and the Pythagorean Theorem, we can convert coordinates from one system to the other.

Hope that helps get you started!

By: ll DangerousDamsel ll

ll DangerousDamsel ll — Thu, 31 May 2018 09:04:00 +0000

Can somebody please explain me the polar co-ordinates thing? I am 14 years old, and they are flying right above my head. In my school, we never came across such terms like “complex numbers” “imaginary dimension/numbers” I really want to learn about the arithmetic process behind it. If anyone can, I’d be extremely indebted to you forever. Thank you for such an awesome article, Kalid!!

By: Mariusz Szmajduch

Mariusz Szmajduch — Sat, 29 Jul 2017 14:43:05 +0000

I think, that the problem with complex numbers is by showing them as a sum. As this number just specifies some value in 2D, therefore a vector should be the obvious notation, imho. It would make a lot of things straightforward – something like (3, 5), where 5 is an orthogonal value.

By: NIHAL V S

NIHAL V S — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 11:52:45 +0000

What about complexdivision?