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An Approach to Complex Numbers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2016

William Wynne Willson
William Wynne Willson*
Affiliation:
School of Education, University of Birmingham
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Extract

The debate about how best to introduce complex numbers is no doubt perennial. (See for instance [1] for a brief survey of some of the possibilities.) One flaw which many presentations have is that they appear somewhat arbitrary. For example one can define complex numbers as polynomial residues to the modulus y2 +1: this definition ought to provoke the question as to why this particular modulus should be chosen.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 54 , Issue 390 , December 1970 , pp. 342 - 346
Copyright
Copyright © Mathematical Association 1970

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References

1. Randall, T. J., An introduction to complex numbers (Math. Gazette, 52, 54, February 1968).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2. Dorman, Janet, Tollefson, Jeffrey L., and Stein, F. Max, Fields and Near-Fields of Ordered Pairs of Reals (Mathematics Teacher, 59, 335, April 1966).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3. Willson, William Wynne, The uniqueness of the field of complex numbers (Mathematics Teacher, 62, 369, May 1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar