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[jsburbidge]

For about the 100th time I have been reading a book of science popularization when it stops dead to explain the imaginary and complex numbers from scratch.

It's been almost 250 years since Euler's Elements of Algebra. Maybe it's time to introduce C and a complete coverage of the number system as part of a basic mathematical education in

Comments

[chickenfeet2003]

What level is it introduced in Canada? When I was at school in the UK it was in the O level maths syllabus. It had to be as that involved solving quadratic equations.

[jsburbidge]

When I was in high school it may have been mentioned earlier, possibly in Grade 11, but was dealt with seriously only in Grade 13 Calculus (where it was fundamental once you start looking at the relation between exponential and trigonometric functions) and Grade 13 Algebra (which covered the quadratic formula); prior grades had restricted problems to those with Real roots.

I don't recall any systematic treatment of C as an algebraic entity until university.

[chickenfeet2003]

It was a pretty functional treatment at school; quadratics, trig functions etc. But, for us, O level maths was at the equivalent of Grade 9 (I was 14 when I took it) so that aspect was introduced quite early. A full algebraic treatment must have been at university. I don't think anything truly got an algebraic treatment until then. A little bit of vector algebra maybe but I don't think I came across any true algebra until Group Theory in my first uni term.

[jsburbidge]

I had a whole term of vector algebra (2 dimensional only) in late high school, but that was the year I was at a lycée in France. The French seem to do more actual algebra and less in the way of polynomials than Canadian schools do;the bulk of the same year in Ontario was a Cartesian treatment of conic sections. Grade 13 Algebra here was a grab-bag of topics, all having very brief coverage - groups, quadratics, permutations and combinations, vectors, binomial distribution, etc.