On Friday 09 March 2007 16:19, Stavros Macrakis wrote:
...
> I am not sure what that means. You can't adjoin INF to the "numbers on
> which arithmetic can be performed" without either breaking some of the
> field axioms or throwing in a huge bucket of infinities and infinitesimals.
> Since no one has a concrete proposal to do the latter, we are forced to
> break some axioms.
...
Could you be talking about something like whats in the "Surreal Numbers" book
by D.E. Knuth (1974). Since the "numbers" are defined using sets, could this
be implemented in maxima? There are "buckets" of infinitesmials and
infinities in that system.
-osman