The octonions were first described by Irish mathematician John T. Graves in 1843, who originally called them "octaves".[1] They were independently described by Arthur Cayley in 1845.
Introduction
The octonions take on the following form, with 8 total elements. e0 is a real number, and the others are imaginary units belonging to 7 different dimensions.
x = e0 + e1 + e2 + e3 + e4 + e5 + e6 + e7
Multiplication
The Fano plane is a diagram that shows how another octonion element is obtained when two octonion elements are multiplied with each other.
The two examples below illustrate how a positive product is obtained when moving along with directions of the arrows in the Fano plane.[2]
e5e3 = e6
e7e6 = e1
The two examples below illustrate how a negative product is obtained when moving against the directions of the arrows in the Fano plane.[2]
e2e4 = -e6
e7e5 = -e2
Both quaternions and octonions are non-commutative, but octonions are also non-associative. However, quaternions are associative. The example below shows how the results of multiplying e5, e2, e4 change when they are grouped differently (in order words, when the order of operations differ).[2]