Talk:179: e to the pi times i

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 01:58, 6 September 2018 by 162.158.62.45 (talk)
Jump to: navigation, search

This is one of the few comics that were changed after release, as stated by Randall in his XKCD book. It first claimed e^(i*Pi) = 1, which lead to huge protest from the community and a correction from Randall. --Gefrierbrand (talk) 09:47, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

He must have been pie-eyed when he wrote that; he's usually pretty good about his math... -- IronyChef (talk) 05:09, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
I see what you did there. Daddy (talk) 15:18, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Randall says in the title text that he's never been satisfied with explanations of the sinusoidal nature of the function of e^ix. http://www.math.toronto.edu/mathnet/questionCorner/epii.html really helps, at least for those who are obsessed with taylor series yet tragically horrible at math. --Jolbucley (talk) 03:39, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Why e to the ix gives a sinusoidal wave? This is because neutrinos keep oscillating. They wouldn't without the e^ix support... 162.158.83.72 04:01, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Technically i isn't "imaginary" at all, but is incorporated into equations to represent rotations perpendicular to the x-y plane. 108.162.210.220 15:51, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

i is imaginary. Both "real" and "imaginary" are terms of art in a mathematical context that have nothing to do with the reality or unreality of the numbers in question. Also, when you're talking about the complex plane, it doesn't have x and y axes: it has real and imaginary axes. But of course, nobody can stop you from defining a mapping from the complex plane to any other vector space if that suits your purpose. 162.158.62.45 01:58, 6 September 2018 (UTC)