by wendy » Sat Sep 22, 2012 11:00 am
Coxeter and Johnson and Conway might well be brilliant mathematicians, but they're not crash hot on a consistant name scheme across the dimensions.
You get the same thing in languages, though, where the general becomes the specific, eg german 'gift' (something given becomes poison), english nim (taken, becomes loony = taken of the senses), english undertaker (one who undertakes becomes .. a burial).
complex already means not simple, or in numbers with sqrt(-1). Likewise, real means variously not involving sqrt(-1), or not discrete (ie the set of real numbers).
In the pg, 'verge' has been selected as the term for a closure around something, in the way a road verge closes around a road. A vertex-verge is the closure of surtopes around a vertrx, an edge=verge is the closure around edges. Verges of the surtopes of polytope are governed by the same laws as the surtopes are themselves, except they work upwards.