georg gill said:
here you use the fact that:
(e^x)^{\frac{1}{y}}=e^{\frac{x}{y}} (a)
I was kind of hoping to prove this for myselfProof of my explanation of how to derivate polynomials are shown here and it shows that my derivation has the problem that I don't know how to prove (a)
http://bildr.no/view/1034861
I have the issue (a)
I tkink it is proved by dedekinds cut. Does anyone have a proof like that for (a) that they can get online? Or they know about a book that has the proof?
Oh dear, it sound like your interests and needs fall into abstract algebra where they formulate and justify every little step like that or a bit mathematical philosophy. I am not the best person to ask.
This is at the same time elementary school algebra which abstract algebraists probably consider too informal and indeed maybe they do not justify these things rigorously at school there yet somehow we all use them and think we know what they mean.
In second year at secondary school we were told that c X c was termed c
2 and c multiplied by itself n times was termed c
n. That was just a
definition of an index in arithmetic. But from that rules like c
n X c
m = c
m+n follow I think it is easy to see. As is also the rule
(c
n)
m = c
nm. (1)
(And by the way those led to logarithms - I don't know how much this aspect there is now at school but for more than 4 centuries they had this important application of mapping the harder operation of multiplying numbers onto the easier one of adding them.)
OK you tell me, that works when raising to integer powers, what about fractional powers 1/n? Your question was about dividing nor multiplying indices. 1/m didn't fall into my definition in fact of an index, I can multiply something by itself 3 times but not 1/3 of a time.
If, having given a consistent arithmetic interpretation to indices that uses the three airthmetic operations we also want to us the fourth then we have to interpret raising to the power 1/m as taking the m-th root.
For if we can apply the multiplication rule (1) in this case then we must have
(c
1/m)
m = c
1 i.e. c
That is to say, c
1/m is that number which when multiplied by itself m times gives c, what we mean by m-th root.
So to have a consistent system of arithmetic with indices starting from my initial definition we can admit fractions into law (1) so that also
(c
n)
1/m = c
n/m
I have only needed integers all through and it could be extended to a consistent system of reals by some such argument as I sketched before about reals.
I take it that was your question. For check and any other questions we need the mathematicians.
(In this connection a teacher asked me not long ago, she had been teaching indices to kids and one had asked her what is 0
0 ? She didn't know whether it was 0, 1 or something else. I had to work that out and decided it was 1 as I'd suspected. She asked me it's a convention. I said not entirely a convention, it's what you need if you start with my starting index convention and want an entirely consistent arithmetical scheme with it. But I don't know whether this ever got through to the kids.)