@lucy since a floating point number is incapable of complexity, I would personally prefer sqrt(1) to not be equal to sqrt(1) than have sqrt(1) be equal to 1/0.

Floating points are really just a way of denoting scalar values in a single dimension (I think those are the only requirements). There are some good reasons not to include a complex component to them, which I leave as an exercise for the reader..

What's a situation where this isn't what you want?