The conversation between human and AI assistant.
Why can't the variable in a polynomial have a fraction or decimal as its exponent?
Why is that?
Well, when we are dealing with whole numbers, we know exactly what operations we can perform and how to simplify the expression. For example, if we have x^2 * x^3, we know that we can add the exponents and simplify to x^5. But if we have x^(2.5) * x^(3.7), things get a lot more complicated.