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Hypercomplex Numbers
In mathematics, hypercomplex number is a traditional term for an element of a finite-dimensional unital algebra over the field of real numbers. The study of hypercomplex numbers in the late 19th century forms the basis of modern group representation theory. History In the nineteenth century, number systems called quaternions, tessarines, coquaternions, biquaternions, and octonions became established concepts in mathematical literature, extending the real and complex numbers. The concept of a hypercomplex number covered them all, and called for a discipline to explain and classify them. The cataloguing project began in 1872 when Benjamin Peirce first published his ''Linear Associative Algebra'', and was carried forward by his son Charles Sanders Peirce. Most significantly, they identified the nilpotent and the idempotent element (ring theory), idempotent elements as useful hypercomplex numbers for classifications. The Cayley–Dickson construction used involution (mat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Non-standard Analysis
The history of calculus is fraught with philosophical debates about the meaning and logical validity of fluxions or infinitesimal numbers. The standard way to resolve these debates is to define the operations of calculus using (ε, δ)-definition of limit, limits rather than infinitesimals. Nonstandard analysis instead reformulates the calculus using a logically rigorous notion of infinitesimal numbers. Nonstandard analysis originated in the early 1960s by the mathematician Abraham Robinson. He wrote: ... the idea of infinitely small or ''infinitesimal'' quantities seems to appeal naturally to our intuition. At any rate, the use of infinitesimals was widespread during the formative stages of the Differential and Integral Calculus. As for the objection ... that the distance between two distinct real numbers cannot be infinitely small, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz argued that the theory of infinitesimals implies the introduction of ideal numbers which might be infinitely small or inf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
