27 Nov
2007
27 Nov
'07
1:11 p.m.
On 11/27/07, metaweta@gmail.com <metaweta@gmail.com> wrote:
A relevant link:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/square.root.html -- Mike Stay
I've read this webpage three times, and I still don't understand it. He seems to be attempting to reconstruct the Cayley-Hamilton derivation of the quaternions, which extends the complex numbers via a new element j such that j^{-1} i j = -i; but since he never states exactly how his new element k is supposed to act on i, it's hard to be sure. Taking into account his cavalier attitude towards what is now non-commutative multiplication, it's scarcely surprising that confusion reigns at the conclusion. Has anybody else managed to make more sense of it than yours truly? WFL