Numerical computation has traditionally been neglected by the Lisp
community. Until Common Lisp there was no carefully thought out
strategy for organizing numerical computation, and with the exception of
the MacLisp system [#Pitman83#
It is important to distinguish between the mathematical numbers, the
Scheme numbers that attempt to model them, the machine representations
used to implement the Scheme numbers, and notations used to write numbers.
This report uses the types <#2287#>number<#2287#>, <#2288#>complex<#2288#>, <#2289#>real<#2289#>,
<#2290#>rational<#2290#>, and <#2291#>integer<#2291#> to refer to both mathematical numbers
and Scheme numbers. Machine representations such as fixed point and
floating point are referred to by names such as <#2292#>fixnum<#2292#> and
<#2293#>flonum<#2293#>.