4 ms·

I love quaternions, but I have to ask: you'd rather have that formula than Euler's identity tattooed?

• klodolph 7y ago
  Today, mathematicians in the most general sense divide into algebraists and analysts. Tattooing Euler’s identity identifies you as a member of the analyst tribe, you live and breathe limits, sequences, and measures. A tattoo of Hamilton’s i^2 = j^2 = k^2 = ijk = -1 would identify you as a member of the algebraist tribe, who lives and breathes commutators, cohomologies, and quotients.
  • pflats 7y ago
    Thanks for writing this! It's spot on. I referenced it in a post upthread[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22204995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22204995
• FisDugthop 7y ago
  As another algebraist (category theory and computational complexity), this makes a lot of sense. Euler's identity is capricious and Euclidean to me, and far from the most beautiful equation, although it is still remarkably elegant. I don't have any tattoos, but I might consider some categorical diagram; I don't know how I'd pick just one! Perhaps there is some cool way to draw the Snake Lemma with a realistic-looking snake.
  • uryga 7y ago
    > I don't know how I'd pick just one! picking one up to unique isomorphism should be good enough ;)