It gets worse actually. You can define a number system using any power of 2 amount of i-like units in a similar relationship to quaternions using the Cayley-Dickson construction
Fascinatingly, you lose some property of the algebra at each step. Quaternions aren’t commutative: ABC != CBA. Octonians aren’t associative: (AB)C != A(BC). Once you get into 16 i’s with subscripts, it really gets crazy.
HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
They’re actually very useful: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternion
qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 3 weeks ago
(…I think you may have gotten whooshed…)
HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Hehe, maybe a little, but wanted to share just in case someone didn’t know :3
Jarix@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I clicked your link, I barely made it out of highschool so I have no idea what any of it means, but I like reading things I shouldn’t understand anyway, sometines it’s so interesting even without understanding.
So I thank you!