The ideal way to think about numbers

Описание: You shouldn't conceive of numbers as actually being their base 10 decimal representation. It's called a representation for a reason. It's much better to just see numbers as what they really are.

Numbers are just polynomials, i.e. the constant functions and the identity; and this subset of the set all of possible mappings of a field into itself generates a ring of polynomials. Although this ring is only a small part of the ring of all possible functions from a field into itself; rings of polynomials and their associated ideals play a fundamental role in many branches of higher mathematics.