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by pastrami_panda 2331 days ago
I love quaternions, but I have to ask: you'd rather have that formula than Euler's identity tattooed?
2 comments

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.
Thanks for writing this! It's spot on. I referenced it in a post upthread[1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22204995

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.
> I don't know how I'd pick just one!

picking one up to unique isomorphism should be good enough ;)