Re: Making 'eq' == 'eql' in bignum branch

[Herring, Davis]

> The original formulation could have been better, but to me
> it didn't look like a rejection of expertise… rather, I took it
> as a statement that the word "number" gets assigned
> different meanings across fields.

You're definitely right that it could have been better: I now realize that I 
made a poor assumption.  Re-quoting:

> Signed infinities are convenient symbols, but they're not numbers; I
> recall the horrified reaction of a mathematician when I told her about
> IEEE infinities

>From context, I took this to mean that the mathematician in question objected 
>to IEEE infinities _because +/-inf "aren't numbers"_, when her opinion could 
>easily have been something rather more nuanced like "the utility of 
>floating-point arithmetic is reduced by the inclusion of values that are not 
>real numbers".  There are legitimate issues with IEEE arithmetic, like the 
>fact that infinities are produced despite the general rule that results are 
>supposed to be rounded to the nearest representable value (which can't ever be 
>infinity).

My apologies for presuming to know the reasoning of someone not even party to 
the conversation!

Davis