Hi, the "author" and OP here.

I posted it 4 days ago here but it got zero attention. Surprisingly, the recovery process from Yesterday's outage of HN, had it reposted, and I was surprised to see it this morning in the front page.

here is the story of this post

I have just started studying math in October, and my first course is linear algebra.

I have read too many introductions to complex numbers that follow the same script:

"Mathematicians needed to solve x^2 = -1, so they invented i, and despite calling it imaginary, it turned out to be useful..."

Then comes the complex plane, and everyone nods along, pretending they understand why we’re drawing circles when we started with algebra.

I never bought it. Something felt wrong.

So, last week I took a break from my lecture/recitation routines to write down everything I know about the topic, fill in the gaps, and search for the real answers.

While I was working with the LLM to answer the questions to myself, at the end of the day, it felt like sharing it might be beneficial, so that took another two days of me fighting the LLM to control it in place and have it focused on the historical facts and chronological order of events.

When my search led to Cardano's actual book, and pages in discussion, I was so thrilled, naively thinking others will find it useful as well. Apparently, everyone want to start an "AI-STARTUP", but refusing to get involved even in reading if AI was involved in the process.

I am open and clear about the use of AI and had no intention of claiming "discoveries" whatsoever.

This is in fact my first "math" related post I put out online, and I get the criticism with open arms, as long as they related to the math and history facts (and there are issues spotted which I may take the time to correct).

The Oil Well analogy (and other spicy terms) is not an AI's but mine, see, at a certain point, I was drinking coffee in my balcony, here in Abu Dhabi, over looking the sandy horizons, and while thinking about a discovery of new layer of numbers, the association with the Oil wells was inevitable.

here is a comment I have written by hand, no AI/LLM involved whatsoever.

thank you for reading.