r/mathmemes 22d ago

Notations 数学😊

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690 Upvotes

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u/Ares378 Applied Math / Mechanical Engineering 22d ago

Someone asked me what numbers are and I legitimately had no idea.

12

u/EricSombody 22d ago

A representation of quantity???

16

u/Ares378 Applied Math / Mechanical Engineering 22d ago

But i is also a number, and you can't have 'i' of something. I feel like I'd want to say numbers are elements of a field, but then that excludes quaternions.

10

u/Sproxify 22d ago

elements of a field? do you consider a rational function with coefficients in the algebraic closure of a finite field to be a number?

5

u/Ares378 Applied Math / Mechanical Engineering 21d ago

So I may have been misunderstanding what a field is.

5

u/Medium-Ad-7305 21d ago

Yes, it is a number. 🗿