Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
> > Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 13:36:08 -0400
> > From: Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
> >
> > Irrational complex bases are pretty near the bottom.
> >
> > What about base -e^2+i3e^.5 ? I'm not even going to try to write out
>what'd
> > 100 in this 'd be in decimal ...
>
>I've never been able to see the fun in transcendental bases --- even
>though you can make rules for a unique representation of numbers, you
>basically can't do arithmetic _in_ them, since any carry from one
>digit position to the next will change all the digits to the right of
>that as well.
The fun was supposed to be the very weirdness and practical uselessness of
an irrational complex base. Arithmetics in the base I suggested above would
be very far from the simplicity and elegance considered to be the mark of
good math.
But thanks for a very interesting letter!
Andreas
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