Numeric Classes

The Haskell 98 numeric classes were designed to classify the operations supported by the Haskell 98 types, Integer, Int, Float, Double, Complex and Ratio. However they are not suitable for other mathematical objects.

If the Haskell 98 classes were retained for backwards compatibility, but with a more refined class hierarchy, the change would impact mostly on those defining instances (and these are the people inconvenienced by the current system). Clients of the classes would notice only some more general types.

References

Some standard algebraic structures

This is a partial list of common structures from abstract algebra. Structures further down and/or to the right are special cases of those further up and/or to the left:

Monoid	Commutative monoid
Group	Abelian group
	Ring	Commutative ring
	Domain	Integral domain
		Unique factorization domain
		Principal ideal domain
		Euclidean domain
	Division ring	Field

See also Semiring, which also lies between commutative monoid and ring.

The Num class

Issues:

Eq and Show don't make sense for functions under lifting.
(*) doesn't make sense for vectors.
abs and signum don't make sense for Complex Integer (Gaussian integers), vectors, matrices, etc. In general, abs and signum make it hard to lift Num through type constructors.

Proposals:

A group-like class with zero, (+) and negate/(-).
(Could be further split with a monoid sub-class.)
A ring-like subclass adding (*) and one/fromInteger, with the existing Num class as a further subclass.
(Could be further split with a semiring subclass, e.g. for natural numbers.)

Note that the Float and Double instances will not satisfy the usual axioms for these structures.

Proposed new classes:

class AbelianGroup a where              -- could also factor out Monoid
    zero            :: a
    (+), (-)        :: a -> a -> a
    negate          :: a -> a

    -- Minimal complete definition:
    --      zero, (+) and (negate or (-))
    negate x        =  zero - x
    x - y           =  x + negate y

class AbelianGroup a => Ring a where
    (*)             :: a -> a -> a
    one             :: a
    fromInteger     :: Integer -> a

    -- Minimal complete definition:
    --      (*) and (one or fromInteger)
    one             =  fromInteger 1
    fromInteger n
      | n < 0       =  negate (fi (negate n))
      | otherwise   =  fi n
      where fi 0    =  zero
            fi 1    =  one
            fi n
              | even n    = fin + fin
              | otherwise = fin + fin + one
              where fin = fi (n `div` 2)

Haskell 98 compatibility class:

class (Eq a, Show a, Ring a) => Num a  where
    abs, signum     :: a -> a

The Fractional class

Issues:

(/), recip and fromRational can be lifted to functions, but many of the pre-requisites can't be defined for these.

Proposals:

Add a division ring-like superclass adding these operations to the ring-like class. (A division ring has the same operations as a field, but does not assume commutative multiplication, allowing structures such as quaternions.)

Add default

fromRational x = fromInteger (numerator x) / fromInteger (denominator x)

This is independent of all the other proposals.

Proposed new classes:

class Ring a => DivisionRing a where
    (/)             :: a -> a -> a
    recip           :: a -> a
    fromRational    :: Rational -> a

    -- Minimal complete definition:
    --      recip or (/)
    recip x         =  one / x
    x / y           =  x * recip y
    fromRational x  =  fromInteger (numerator x) /
                       fromInteger (denominator x)

class DivisionRing a => Field a

Haskell 98 compatibility class:

class (Num a, Field a) => Fractional a

The Real class

Issues:

The class assumes a mapping to Rational, but this cannot be defined for structures intermediate between the rationals and reals even though the operations of subclasses make sense for them, e.g. surds, computable reals.

Proposal:

Retain the class for backward compatibility only.

The Integral class

Issues:

Division with remainder also makes sense for polynomials and Gaussian integers, but not Enum, toInteger, Ord, Num(abs, signum) or toRational. Provided any non-zero remainder is "smaller" than the divisor, in some well-founded sense, Euclid's algorithm terminates.
Defining Ratio also requires a canonical factorization of any element as x as y*u where u is an invertible element (or unit). Any such y is called an associate of x. For integral types (but not others), this is similar to signum and abs, but the general idea makes sense for any integral domain.
In algebra, each field is trivially a Euclidean domain, with the remainder always zero. However this would break backwards compatibility, as well as the programming languages convention of distinguishing integer division.

Proposal:

Add a Euclidean domain class, with canonical factorization satisfying

stdAssociate x * stdUnit x = x
stdUnit (x*y) = stdUnit x * stdUnit y
stdUnit x * (one `div` stdUnit x) = x
x*y = one  =>  stdUnit x = x

and either divMod or quotRem.

(Could be further split by placing canonical factorization in an integral domain class, but division would not be available for default definitions, and would also need to supply the reciprocal of stdUnit x.)

Proposed new class:

class Ring a => EuclideanDomain a where
    stdAssociate    :: a -> a
    stdUnit         :: a -> a
    normalize       :: a -> (a, a)

    div, mod        :: a -> a -> a
    divMod          :: a -> a -> (a,a)

    -- Minimal complete definition:
    --      (stdUnit or normalize) and (divMod or (div and mod))
    stdAssociate x  =  x `div` stdUnit x
    stdUnit x       =  snd (normalize x)
    normalize x     =  (stdAssociate x, stdUnit x)

    n `divMod` d    =  (n `div` d, n `mod` d)
    n `div` d       =  q  where (q,r) = divMod n d
    n `mod` d       =  r  where (q,r) = divMod n d

Haskell 98 compatibility class:

class (Real a, Enum a, EuclideanDomain a) => Integral a  where
    quot, rem       :: a -> a -> a
    quotRem         :: a -> a -> (a,a)
    toInteger       :: a -> Integer

    -- Minimal complete definition:
    --      toInteger
    n `quot` d      =  q  where (q,r) = quotRem n d
    n `rem` d       =  r  where (q,r) = quotRem n d
    quotRem n d     =  if signum r == - signum d then (q+one, r-d) else qr
      where qr@(q,r) = divMod n d

The RealFloat class

Issues:

The class groups together the trigonometric operation atan2 with operations on the components of floating-point numbers.

Proposals

add new subclasses for groups, rings, division rings and Euclidean domains, as above.
as 1, plus additional subclasses that do not assume negation (monoid, semiring, etc). This would make most sense if we had natural numbers.