: a number of the form a + b √-1 where a and b are real numbers
Examples of complex number in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the WebBut complex numbers live up to their name: The set’s boundary is magnificently intricate.—Quanta Magazine, 26 Jan. 2024 So if a proof requires an intermediate step in which, for example, there are complex numbers that may contain square roots of negative values, programming languages specialized for geometry cannot be used.—Manon Bischoff, Scientific American, 17 Jan. 2024 Increasingly, economists, scholars and individual workers are harnessing data to determine a person’s lifetime wealth accumulation, a complex number scaffolded by social and cultural factors that intensify the effect of women’s pay inequality into their retirement years.—Kim Bellware, Washington Post, 16 Jan. 2024 Quadratic reciprocity was the inspiration, according to Conrad. Patterns that had been elusive without complex numbers now started to emerge.—Quanta Magazine, 1 Nov. 2023 This changed once Gauss brought reciprocity into the realm of complex numbers, which add the square root of minus 1, represented by i, to ordinary numbers.—Quanta Magazine, 1 Nov. 2023 The idea of what are known as complex numbers — a set of numbers larger than what most people encounter in math class — is even older, although for centuries even mathematicians did not know what to make of them.—Kenneth Chang, New York Times, 24 Oct. 2023 Any complex number can therefore be represented as a point in a two-dimensional plane.—Jordana Cepelewicz, Quanta Magazine, 21 Sep. 2023 As a result, mathematicians often turn to the complex numbers, which can be thought of as pairs of real numbers.—Jordana Cepelewicz, Quanta Magazine, 21 Sep. 2023
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'complex number.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Share