I struggle with this a lot, too. Maybe "complex numbers" is a misnomer, and we should call them "complex operations", or "complex methods".
I have a hunch that for math people complex numbers are tied really close to the operations you perform with them. But to me, the lay man, the numbers are just data.
From reading around on HN I infer that there are certain things that are grouped together because they share certain actions. Groups, sets, monads.
However, if you were to encounter the number (1, 5) in the wild, you wouldnt know if it was a complex number or just a 2 dimensional vector until it is operated upon.
> The OP was looking for "explanation of complex numbers"
> You won't explain anything by talking about 2D points only
The OP was complaining about the explanation that complex numbers "have a real and an imaginary part", because it mean nothing to them. It is alright, then, to clarify that this just means that they are points in the plane, and some operations will be defined on these points.
alright. Yet, one 2d point is certainly enough to define one complex number, which is what I meant.
The data is the same, but they have different methods.