(no subject)

[arethinn]

amusing title of donated book:

Basic Complex Analysis

So which is it? Basic or complex?

(yes, I know this is probably referring to some area of mathematics that is way beyond me... it just made me chuckle.)

Comments

[digitalsidhe.livejournal.com]

My quick guess: "complex" here probably has to do with imaginary numbers. (Quickie primer: i is the square root of -1, and hence what's called an "imaginary number"; things like 2i + 3 are called "complex numbers", because they mix imaginary and real numbers.)

So I suspect that "complex analysis" is something to do with analyzing complex numbers, or analyzing some other things by using complex numbers. And this book teaches "basic complex analysis", and then there might be an even harder book that teaches "advanced complex analysis".

But I agree, it still caused me a definite double-take when I saw the title.

(And keep in mind that the first two paragraphs are nearly complete guesswork on my part.)

[arethinn]

I did take intermediate algebra in the 10th grade, you know. I do get the jokes in the Jargon File about "El Camino Imaginary" and Moffett Field being "where they keep all those complex planes." ;)

The first 25 pages (less the intro and table of contents) is about "properties of complex numbers", but it goes off from there into stuff that is way beyond me (as I predicted). I guess "complex analysis" is one of those fields that if you are studying it at all, you already know what it's supposed to be about and do (like "linear algebra").

I only got up to integral calculus, myself, and that's pretty much no longer with me (since it was oh... almost ten years ago now).

[digitalsidhe.livejournal.com]

Terribly sorry; I didn't mean to offend. Lately, I've mostly been hanging out with non-math-inclined folks who really would have needed the explanation.

Heck, if you did some integral calc, you've got more math than me. The best I can claim is to have completely flunked a business calc course, about <mmmblgwrlbrrgle> years ago. Sorry about the unneeded explanation.

[arethinn]

It's actually kind of sad... I wish I could just up and do calculus the way I can write English, or even the way I can fake my way through a conversation about Renaissance art (upper division art history reprezent!). My textbooks from differential & integral calculus are the only ones I still have. I found them easy to use at the time and so I kept them hoping that some day I might want to go back and re-learn it. Hasn't happened yet, and now the basis of trig and stuff that underlies it has faded too much as well to be able to just dive back in.

[nsingman.livejournal.com]

Your quick guess is pretty accurate. :-)

Analysis is one of the fundamental branches of mathematics. After finishing a few semesters of calculus, a student is usually ready for real analysis, and then complex analysis.

[arethinn]

It's interesting how the "fundamental" branches are generally arrived at only at the very leaf-tip of the study of math...