Cookbooks
Elixir
Chapter 3. Numbers
Working with complex numbers

Elixir:
Working with complex numbers

How to:

Elixir doesn’t have built-in complex numbers, so we roll our own or use a library, like ComplexNum. Here’s a quick example with a lib:

# Assuming you have ComplexNum installed
defmodule ComplexMath do
  import ComplexNum

  def add(a, b) do
    ComplexNum.add(a, b)
  end
end

# Create complex numbers and add them
c1 = {3, 4}   # represents 3 + 4i
c2 = {2, -3}  # represents 2 - 3i
result = ComplexMath.add(c1, c2)
IO.puts "The result is: #{inspect(result)}"

This would output:

The result is: {5, 1}

It means the sum of 3 + 4i and 2 - 3i is 5 + 1i.

Deep Dive

Complex numbers popped up in history because regular ol’ numbers couldn’t handle square roots of negatives. It wasn’t until the 17th century that they were taken seriously, thanks to mathematicians like René Descartes and Gerolamo Cardano.

In Elixir, you often use tuples like {3, 4} for complex numbers, or use a dedicated lib to avoid reinventing the wheel. Libraries are usually better—they handle the nitty-gritty like multiplication and division, which get tricky because of the imaginary unit ‘i’ (FYI: i squared equals -1).

See Also

Check out these resources:

Rounding numbers