Re: "dimensional analysis"?

"Father Ignatius" <FatherIgnatius@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

"Evan Kirshenbaum" <kirshenbaum@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:oe1andmk.fsf@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (J. J. Lodder) writes:

Indeed, a bit too short. The objects of discourse are finite
dimensional vectors with coefficients in the integers, which form
an algebra.

Why integers? Some treatments for programming languages allowed
the exponents to be at least rationals. That had the advantage
that you

Yabbut. The implementations in programming languages of all number
types are nesser celery finite, innit? Meaning, I believe, that
they don't form an algebra. I seem to be hearing many veils rending
in the mathematical temple.

Oh, sure. We know we only pretend we deal with things like integers,
reals, and the like, and often the approximation is good enough that
it actually works. When dealing with things like dimensionality, it's
often reasonable to assume that the rational exponents won't have
numerators or denominators greater than, say, 2^32 (about four
billion) or 2^64 (about 18 billion billion). As a matter of fact,
it's often reasonable to assume that they won't have numerators or
denominators greater than eight or sixteen.

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http://www.kirshenbaum.net/


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