hi sam,

the real sat exam, as designed by the college board, does have some questions with imaginary numbers, expressed as i. and often, those imaginary numbers can behave just like regular variables, in the same way that you saw in the third-party test question. this is one of the reason that mihn said complex numbers aren’t as complex as you might assume.

as mihn also mentioned, this kind of imaginary number is rare in sat math. but you still see problems like this– there will often be one imaginary number problem on a real college board sat math section. to find examples of these problems, i recommend combing through the math sections of the free full-length practice tests on the college board’s official sat website. be sure to check the math sections in the official guide to the sat too.

i found at least one example for you. you can see a typical sat imaginary number problem in sat practice test # 1. it’s the second question in section 3 of the test (page 35). you can read an answer explanation to the question on page 26 of practice test #1’s answer explanation pdf.

so, i’m helping my son prepare for the sat and was interested to see that they now may apparently have imaginary numbers.

one of the questions on a practice test did have an i in it, but it wasn’t clear whether it was intended to represent an imaginary number or just a regular variable (i answered it assuming it was a regular variable and got the answer correct — but it was an invented practice test by a test-prep company, and those tend to be a little sketchy anyway).

so, any advice? do you have any actual sat questions with imaginary numbers so we can see some samples?

sam

thanks for the tip, josh 🙂

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