[dhosek]

I’m aware my son is an outlier, but I’m rather proud of his working out the square root(s) of i without even having algebra yet (he’s in fifth grade). Last year I taught him how to solve simple linear equations (ax + b = c) and expanded that to ax + b = cx + d, but he’s been mostly an autodidact with his advanced math (consulting youtube videos and books from the library).

But yeah, there seems not to be a lot of assumption of familiarity with complex numbers beyond the basics of their existence and maybe some simple arithmetic on numbers in the form a + bi which other than i² = −1 is just following the usual rules for polynomial arithmetic. I was surprised at how much basic content on complex numbers was included in the first chapter of my graduate text on complex analysis.