Thread: math problem...?

  1. #16
    Registered User guesst's Avatar
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    *shrug* When it comes to infinity you can prove alot of things that fly in the face of existing proofs. Just goes to show: Math is a religion, not a science.
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  2. #17
    & the hat of GPL slaying Thantos's Avatar
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    I have yet to see a single counter proof for this.

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    C++ Witch laserlight's Avatar
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    When it comes to infinity you can prove alot of things that fly in the face of existing proofs.
    If the proof contradicts another proof, then at least one of them must be wrong, and consequently not a proof.

    As mentioned in my private message, I am still curious to know if indeed you have met professional mathematicians that regard infinity as a number, and thus formally use the notation 10^(-infinity) instead of involving limits.
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    Registered User guesst's Avatar
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    Sorry, there's no PM pop-up.

    As for does anyone use the notation 10^(infiniate), no, but they express the idea verbally.
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    C++ Witch laserlight's Avatar
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    As for does anyone use the notation 10^(infiniate), no, but they express the idea verbally.
    But is 0 not the limit of 10^x as x tends to negative infinity? Like Thantos, I cannot see how this is any sort of proof that 0.999... is not equal to 1.
    Quote Originally Posted by Bjarne Stroustrup (2000-10-14)
    I get maybe two dozen requests for help with some sort of programming or design problem every day. Most have more sense than to send me hundreds of lines of code. If they do, I ask them to find the smallest example that exhibits the problem and send me that. Mostly, they then find the error themselves. "Finding the smallest program that demonstrates the error" is a powerful debugging tool.
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  6. #21
    Registered User guesst's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by laserlight View Post
    But is 0 not the limit of 10^x as x tends to negative infinity? Like Thantos, I cannot see how this is any sort of proof that 0.999... is not equal to 1.
    *shrug* I never understood it myself, but these were folks who were professors in the field. There are many people convinced that infinity, or infinite decimal places, tends to break proofs.

    By the way...
    Quote Originally Posted by Stonehambey View Post
    There is a better method for showing this;

    Let x = 0.999...

    10x = 9.999...

    9x = 10x - x = (9.999...) - (0.999...) = 9

    x = 1

    But most computers can't store an infinite number of decimal pts ^_^
    Your proof makes a little more sense if you explicitly state before the last step that the step before it means that 9x = 9 therefore x = 1.
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