Over fields, polynomials mostly behave as expected, and systems of linear equations are solved very similarly to R. Basically, you can adapt quite a lot of real

Over fields, polynomials mostly behave as expected, and systems of linear equations are solved very similarly to R. Basically, you can adapt quite a lot of real and complex algorithms to other fields, including matrix operations. Once you leave fields and then even integral domains, things get weird. For example, the quadratic equation x^2 = 1 has four roots in Z_8.