Re: .999... ?= 1

From: Eckard Blumschein (blumschein_at_et.uni-magdeburg.de)
Date: 06/04/04 

Date: Fri, 04 Jun 2004 12:28:32 +0100

Robin Chapman wrote:

>>On the other hand, many rised questions seem to be unanswered so far.
>>Maybe, there is a more convincing outcome to the problem how to split Q
>>or IR into Q+ and Q- or IR+ and IR- without either leaving a neutral
>>rest, in particular the number zero or arbitrarily attributing it to the
>>positive or negative side.
>
>
> I get it at last --- for some reason it offends you that zero
> is neither negative nor positive.

Admittedly, I puzzled my brain how to get out of this famous dilemma
after I was amused how awkward mathematicians used to deal with this
worry. The even arbitrarily defined IR+ with or without inclusion of
zero. What nonsense! Only number fetishists do so clumsy and stupid.

> It's a fact,

Why not? I respect your creed. I do not object against exactly zero
being a number without sign. At the same time I see it also as without
any extention. Within a continuum, it is not more existant than any
other discrete number. Nothing justies to reject its identical
substitutes +0.0 over bar or -0.0 over bar instead of zero itself.

>>I see zero having three aspects of equal value but different sign:
>> minus 0.0 over bar
>> just zero
>> plus 0.0 over bar.
>
>
> There we are....the all-too-familiar sight of the crass formalist
> confusion of a number with a series of digits representing it.

On the contrary. A number is not represented by a finite series but by
an infinite one. This makes the difference.

Eckard Blumschein

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