Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 May 2009
This paper results from the design and development of computer software for lengthy computations with Cayley's algebra C over the field of reals. The algebra C is 8-dimensional over the reals and is not associative. Integer elements of C are defined and can be stored as integer arrays. The problem of solving linear equations αξ = β in C is implemented by using the equation where is the conjugate and N(α) is the non-zero norm of α. Programming multiplication of Cayley numbers is comparable in difficulty to programming matrix multiplication for matrices with eight rows and eight columns.