Complex literals (was Re: I am never going to complain about Python again)

[William Ray Wing]

On Oct 10, 2013, at 10:12 AM, Grant Edwards <invalid at invalid.invalid> wrote:

> On 2013-10-10, Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 12:09 AM, Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> wrote:
>>> BTW, one of the earliest things that turned me on to Python was when I
>>> discovered that it uses j as the imaginary unit, not i.  All
>>> right-thinking people will agree with me on this.
>> 
>> I've never been well-up on complex numbers; can you elaborate on this,
>> please? All I know is that I was taught that the square root of -1 is
>> called i,
> 
> Nope.  "i" is electical current (though it's more customary to use
> upper case).  "j" is the square root of -1.
> 

It all depends on where (in what field) you learned about complex numbers.  Mathematicians and Physicists use i, engineers use j.

-Bill