the sprectrum of different number systems and kinds in mathematics

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I heard of Hypercomplex numbers like quaternions but whereever I search for them its unintelligible…

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Anonymous 0 Comments

You can think of complex numbers as pairs of real numbers, on which operations like addition, multiplication, etc. have been given certain definitions such that the system has various nice properties that make it useful for various tasks.

Similarly, you can think of quaternions as lists of four real numbers on which various operations have been given particular definitions. One thing that’s slightly weird about them is that multiplication does not commute: for two quaternions p and q, p multiplied by q is not necessarily the same as q multiplied by p. The main thing that quaternions are used for is storing information about 3D rotations in computer systems. Other than that, they really are pretty obscure and don’t come up much in most areas of maths or science.

But there are many other systems of numbers used in maths: the integers, the rationals, the reals, the cardinals, the ordinals, the p-adic numbers, the extended reals, the projective reals, the extended complex numbers, the hyperreals, the computable numbers…

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