Thus spake Owen Densmore circa 09-10-10 08:26 PM: > Has anyone read this? > http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/octonions/conway_smith/ > I've not read enough Conway and I'm not sure where to start!
So, is it fair to say that octonions are a geometric algebra, even though they aren't associative? I think I remember reading somewhere that they were considered a geometric algebra... perhaps in Hestenes book or in Penrose's Road to Reality. But wikipedia claims that a geometric norm _must_ be associative and that a geometric algebra must be over a vector space with an associative norm. WTF? Is wikipedia oversimplifying? Or are octonions really not considered a geometric algebra despite their deep relevance to geometry? And, more importantly, why do my searches for Clifford fail in Adobe Reader, but succeed in Evince, while reading the following file: http://www.ams.org/bull/2002-39-02/S0273-0979-01-00934-X/S0273-0979-01-00934-X.pdf ??? -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
