phoenixthoth
- 1,600
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organic,
i remember that as well. of course if all you want to do is work with money, all you need is rational numbers. if you want to work with higher physics, you need the complex numbers gauss helped introduce. i don't know what conway's surreal numbers are good for but they are interesting and isn't that enough? hyperreal numbers can actually be used to prove statements in real analysis, though every analyst I've spoken with says they'd rather use real analysis. i will always encourage the search for something new even though i think that the search may just be a frustrating effort of spinning one's wheels and not doing anything essentially new. but why discourage the attempt? often when one does something like that, it gives them better understanding of the rules they are bending, of regular numbers.
phoenix
i remember that as well. of course if all you want to do is work with money, all you need is rational numbers. if you want to work with higher physics, you need the complex numbers gauss helped introduce. i don't know what conway's surreal numbers are good for but they are interesting and isn't that enough? hyperreal numbers can actually be used to prove statements in real analysis, though every analyst I've spoken with says they'd rather use real analysis. i will always encourage the search for something new even though i think that the search may just be a frustrating effort of spinning one's wheels and not doing anything essentially new. but why discourage the attempt? often when one does something like that, it gives them better understanding of the rules they are bending, of regular numbers.
phoenix