Surreal Arithmetic, Lazily

2026/04/20 by Lloyd Allison · 1 voice
Computer Science · Mathematics · #Advanced Mathematical Theories #Class (philosophy) #Computability, Logic, AI Algorithms #Key (lock) #Logic, programming, and type systems #Process (computing) #Selection (genetic algorithm) #Semantics (computer science) #Yield (engineering) #cs.DS #cs.PL

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2604.17885

openalex publication_date 2026/04/20 · arxiv published 2026/04/20 · arxiv updated 2026/04/20 · openalex created_date 2026/04/22 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Conway's surreal numbers were aptly named by Knuth. This note examines how far one can get towards implementing surreals and the arithmetic operations on them so that they execute efficiently. Lazy evaluation and recursive data structures yield a considerable speed up.

Discussions

• I still have somewhere around an old copy of Conway's "On Numbers and Games." Surreal numbers are one of those concepts that are undeniably fun to think about but you can't shake off the feeling that [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]

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