you can still imagine some kind of static analysis that gives you an error if you accidentally write an algorithm that might add kgs of steel to kilojoules, and which is sufficiently powerful to accept at least the commonly-used numerical algorithms; not just matrix multiply but, in your example, probably the simplex algorithm
(we could call that analysis a 'type system', but perhaps obviously, it is significantly different from the type systems we're most familiar with)
i agree that this doesn't end up with vectors of homogeneous types, but it does end up with vectors of the correct type, which might be what was meant by 'consistent'
