Friday, January 7, 2011

Quick Thought-Numbers as Objects

I'll hopefully have time to think more about this later but I want to toss
it out now.

What if we consider numbers as Objects. What I mean by this is the number
itself has Properties (things that define/control it) and Methods (things it can do-operations?)

We can already define, for example, a number system in this way. Take the Integers.
Just to list a few.

Integers
Properties
Positive
Negative
Contain Zero

Methods
Add
Subtract
Commute

This is a limited subset but what if we did the same thing with numbers themselves?
Could this help us get rid of anomolies such as division by zero?

Take the number 12
A Property might inlude
Made up of 12 Unit objects

Methods might include
FindOpposite
FindPrimeFactors
FindDecimalRepresentationByLimit


If we combine this with say the number 0 and use it's method, FindDecimalRepresentationByLimit, then if we took the Object 12 and divided it by
by the Object 0 using FindDecimalRepresentationByLimit we might be able to define an answer.
As opposed to "not defined."

This is not well thought out but I thought I'd toss it out to help remind me to investigate
the idea later.

Who knows, maybe it will help with the pattern of primes or irrational numbers like PI.

Just a thought