[om] DefMP elements

Professor James Davenport jhd at cs.bath.ac.uk
Thu Dec 11 12:13:19 CET 2003


On Wed, 10 Dec 2003, Bill Naylor wrote:
> Excuse me for appearing a bit ignorant here. The signature for sin in STS
> is defined as sin: NumericalValue -> NumericalValue, where NumericalValue
> is defined as:
> 
> "NumericalValue
> 
> Denotes an OpenMath object that is to be thought of as something that
> represents a numerical value, or a numerical value."
> 
> this seems very circular to me, where do we define a 'numerical value'? I
> mean integers are clearly numerical values, so are reals. Almost as
> clearly complex numbers are numerical values. What about Quaternions? I
> would have thought so? What is it that makes them numerical and matrices
> not?
We don't, and this is a weakness of a system like STS. Now that the Pisa 
meeting has approved multiple signatures, we could tidy this up a little. 
I had thought of NumericalValue as being substes of C or Z/(n).
James
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