Difference between imaginary and complex numbers

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Recently I was talking to my teacher about complex and imaginary numbers and he told me basically that $i$ is a complex number; its real part is just 0. However, this has made me wonder; if you can see $i$ as a complex number because you could argue its real part is 0, how can you differentiate between complex numbers and imaginary numbers?

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2 Answers

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Every complex number can be written as $z=a+bi$, where $a,b\in \mathbb{R}$ (real numbers). The number $a$ is called real part of $z$ and the number $b$ is the imaginary part of $z$.

If the real part is zero then we call $z=bi$ as pure imaginary complex number.

Here is a diagram to show the inclusions:

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Imaginary numbers are numbers than can be written as a real number multiplied by the imaginary unit $i$, and complex numbers are imaginary numbers, plus numbers that has both real and imaginary parts. $i$ is both imaginary and complex. The imaginaries are a subset of the complex numbers, as the naturals are a subset of the integers.

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