On Thu, 2010-06-03 at 12:44 +1200, Richard O'Keefe wrote: > On Jun 3, 2010, at 1:13 AM, Maciej Piechotka wrote: > > > On Wed, 2010-06-02 at 14:01 +1200, Richard O'Keefe wrote: > >> For what applications is it "useful" to use the same symbol > >> for operations obeying (or in the case of floating point > >> operations, *approximating* operations obeying) distinct laws? > >> > >> > > > > If the given operations do share something in common. For example * is > > usually commutative. However you do use it with quaternions (Hamilton > > product). You even write ij = k despite the fact that ji = -k. > > I think you just made my point: Commutativity is NOT one of the > standard > properties that * is EXPECTED to possess.
I don't think that many people expect * to be not commutative (I'm not speaking about people who deal with Mathematics - I mean 'average person' and 'average programmer'). > If you look at the Int and Double instance of Random in > the Random.hs that comes with Hugs, you'll see they use > different code. It's not because of any problem with / > per se but because they need genuinely different algorithms. > > Point taken. Regards
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