"surreal number" meaning in English

See surreal number in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: surreal numbers [plural]
Etymology: Coined by Donald Knuth in his 1974 novelette Surreal Numbers: How Two Ex-Students Turned on to Pure Mathematics and Found Total Happiness. The concept had been developed by British mathematician John Conway for his game theoretic research of the board game go. Conway had simply called them numbers, but subsequently adopted Knuth's term and used it in his 1976 book On Numbers and Games. Head templates: {{en-noun}} surreal number (plural surreal numbers)
  1. (mathematics) Any element of a field equivalent to the real numbers augmented with infinite and infinitesimal numbers (respectively larger and smaller (in absolute value) than any positive real number). Wikipedia link: Donald Knuth, John Horton Conway, On Numbers and Games, surreal number Categories (topical): Mathematics, Numbers Translations (element of an extension of the real numbers that includes infinite numbers and infinitesimals): nombre surréel [masculine] (French), numero surreale [masculine] (Italian), número surreal [masculine] (Portuguese)

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for surreal number meaning in English (4.7kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "Coined by Donald Knuth in his 1974 novelette Surreal Numbers: How Two Ex-Students Turned on to Pure Mathematics and Found Total Happiness. The concept had been developed by British mathematician John Conway for his game theoretic research of the board game go. Conway had simply called them numbers, but subsequently adopted Knuth's term and used it in his 1976 book On Numbers and Games.",
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        {
          "text": "Conway's construction of surreal numbers relies on the use of transfinite induction.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "text": "Conway's approach was to build numbers from scratch using a construction inspired by his game theory research; the resulting class of surreal numbers proved much larger than the class of real numbers.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "text": "1986, Harry Gonshor, “An Introduction to the Theory of Surreal Numbers”, in Paperback, Cambridge University Press, published 1987, →ISBN:",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012, Fredrik Nordvall Forsberg, Anton Setzer, A Finite Axiomatisation of Inductive-Inductive Definitions, Ulrich Berger, Hannes Diener, Peter Schuster, Monika Seisenberger (editors), Logic, Construction, Computation, Ontos Verlag, page 263, The class² of surreal numbers is defined inductively, together with an order relation on surreal numbers wich is also defined inductively",
          "text": "• A surreal number X=(X_L,X_R) consists of two sets X_L and X_R of surreal numbers, such that no element from X_L is greater than any element from X_R.\n• A surreal number Y=(Y_L,Y_R) is greater than another surreal number X=(X_L,X_R), X<Y, if and only if\n− there is no x∈X_L such that Y<x, and\n− there is no y∈Y_R such that y<X."
        },
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          "ref": "2018, Steven G. Krantz, Essentials of Mathematical Thinking, Taylor & Francis (Chapman & Hall/CRC Press), page 247",
          "text": "Here we shall follow Conway's exposition rather closely. Let L and R be two sets of numbers. Assume that no member of L is greater than or equal to any member of R. Then #x5C;#x7B;L#x5C;vertR#x5C;#x7D; is a surreal number. All surreal numbers are constructed in this fashion.",
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        "Any element of a field equivalent to the real numbers augmented with infinite and infinitesimal numbers (respectively larger and smaller (in absolute value) than any positive real number)."
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        "(mathematics) Any element of a field equivalent to the real numbers augmented with infinite and infinitesimal numbers (respectively larger and smaller (in absolute value) than any positive real number)."
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        "mathematics",
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          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
          "sense": "element of an extension of the real numbers that includes infinite numbers and infinitesimals",
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          "word": "nombre surréel"
        },
        {
          "code": "it",
          "lang": "Italian",
          "sense": "element of an extension of the real numbers that includes infinite numbers and infinitesimals",
          "tags": [
            "masculine"
          ],
          "word": "numero surreale"
        },
        {
          "code": "pt",
          "lang": "Portuguese",
          "sense": "element of an extension of the real numbers that includes infinite numbers and infinitesimals",
          "tags": [
            "masculine"
          ],
          "word": "número surreal"
        }
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Donald Knuth",
        "John Horton Conway",
        "On Numbers and Games",
        "surreal number"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "surreal number"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Coined by Donald Knuth in his 1974 novelette Surreal Numbers: How Two Ex-Students Turned on to Pure Mathematics and Found Total Happiness. The concept had been developed by British mathematician John Conway for his game theoretic research of the board game go. Conway had simply called them numbers, but subsequently adopted Knuth's term and used it in his 1976 book On Numbers and Games.",
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          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "text": "Conway's approach was to build numbers from scratch using a construction inspired by his game theory research; the resulting class of surreal numbers proved much larger than the class of real numbers.",
          "type": "example"
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          "ref": "2012, Fredrik Nordvall Forsberg, Anton Setzer, A Finite Axiomatisation of Inductive-Inductive Definitions, Ulrich Berger, Hannes Diener, Peter Schuster, Monika Seisenberger (editors), Logic, Construction, Computation, Ontos Verlag, page 263, The class² of surreal numbers is defined inductively, together with an order relation on surreal numbers wich is also defined inductively",
          "text": "• A surreal number X=(X_L,X_R) consists of two sets X_L and X_R of surreal numbers, such that no element from X_L is greater than any element from X_R.\n• A surreal number Y=(Y_L,Y_R) is greater than another surreal number X=(X_L,X_R), X<Y, if and only if\n− there is no x∈X_L such that Y<x, and\n− there is no y∈Y_R such that y<X."
        },
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          "ref": "2018, Steven G. Krantz, Essentials of Mathematical Thinking, Taylor & Francis (Chapman & Hall/CRC Press), page 247",
          "text": "Here we shall follow Conway's exposition rather closely. Let L and R be two sets of numbers. Assume that no member of L is greater than or equal to any member of R. Then #x5C;#x7B;L#x5C;vertR#x5C;#x7D; is a surreal number. All surreal numbers are constructed in this fashion.",
          "type": "quotation"
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      "glosses": [
        "Any element of a field equivalent to the real numbers augmented with infinite and infinitesimal numbers (respectively larger and smaller (in absolute value) than any positive real number)."
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        "(mathematics) Any element of a field equivalent to the real numbers augmented with infinite and infinitesimal numbers (respectively larger and smaller (in absolute value) than any positive real number)."
      ],
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        "mathematics",
        "sciences"
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  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "element of an extension of the real numbers that includes infinite numbers and infinitesimals",
      "tags": [
        "masculine"
      ],
      "word": "nombre surréel"
    },
    {
      "code": "it",
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      "sense": "element of an extension of the real numbers that includes infinite numbers and infinitesimals",
      "tags": [
        "masculine"
      ],
      "word": "numero surreale"
    },
    {
      "code": "pt",
      "lang": "Portuguese",
      "sense": "element of an extension of the real numbers that includes infinite numbers and infinitesimals",
      "tags": [
        "masculine"
      ],
      "word": "número surreal"
    }
  ],
  "word": "surreal number"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-05 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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