Version 10 of Octave

Updated 2006-11-03 17:29:21

"GNU Octave is a high-level language, primarily intended for numerical computations", according to its home page [L1 ]. Its language "is mostly compatible with Matlab." Additional compatibility functions are available at octave-forge[L2 ].

dead link:: http://merlin.inescn.pt/~qual/tk_octave/index.htm ?

Try http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/ or http://www.octave.org

Tkoctave

octcl: Tcl client for the Octave server. Part of octave-forge[L3 ].

Provocatively, the 2006 second edition of the popular Scientific Computing with MATLAB was retitled, Scientific Computing with MATLAB and Octave. Open source marches on.


Also, octaves are 8-dimensional numbers, just as complex numbers are 2-dimensional and quaternions 4-dimensional, and more dimensions seem not to make any sense anymore, in number theory.

AM I think you will find that octonions are 8-dimensional numbers, they are also called biquaternions.

Their properties or better the lack of familiar properties is rather curious:

  • Complex numbers can not be ordered: "i < 1" makes no sense
  • Quaternions do not commute when multiplied: a * b != b * a
  • Octionions do not have the associative property: a * (b * c) != (a * b) * c

(This latter lack of properties seems to be responsible for there not being a system of 16-dimensional numbers ...)

The existence of octonions does mean that in 7-dimensional space, just as in 3-dimensional space, but in no others, there exists an out-product for vectors.

(Okay, there are all rather impractical faits divers - but I thought you might like to know :)


Category Application | Category Mathematics