Square roots

[Adron]

I'm in Pre-Calc this year and trust me when my teacher lets us use calculators, she makes the tests so difficult that it's impossible to solve any single problem without it. So I'd rather have problems that you could solve in your head such as the sqrt(-100) rather than having logarithms etc.

I think you can probably solve problems fine without a calculator, you just can't give a numerical / decimal answer, but have to give exact answers.

[Yoni]

I'm in Pre-Calc this year and trust me when my teacher lets us use calculators, she makes the tests so difficult that it's impossible to solve any single problem without it. So I'd rather have problems that you could solve in your head such as the sqrt(-100) rather than having logarithms etc.

That sounds really stupid. Math tests shouldn't contain many numbers, mostly letters. The reason they let you use calculators is because you don't need them at all, not to make them absolutely necessary by introducing annoying numbers.

[j0k3r]

We were taught early that the square root of a negative number is undefined, and that would have been the correct answer on the test (when I was in math).  They didn't want us using imaginary numbers back then.

Grade 11, they expect us to know them and use them.

This is a bit off topic, but don't you guys just hate that complex numbers are called, "imaginary numbers?"

I think it's like that cause "i" isn't a number?

[ITAKal89]

But they're still no more imaginary than other numbers.

[Adron]

But they're still no more imaginary than other numbers.

I suppose the difference is that there aren't any normal tangible physical quantities that are measured in imaginary numbers...