Re: Problems I have with 1.999...=2

Kirby Cook wrote:
> Problems I have with 1.999...=2

First off, you might at least wish us Happy Mother's Day or somesuch. I
mean, this is a joke, right?

<arbitrary snip>

> I use the words "hopelessly superstitious" advisedly, as it seems to
me
> that the common invocation of the words "without limit" and all
similar
> such are used with no more understanding than a twelve year old's
> fervent incantation to charm warts.

Absolutely. Please give us the title and author of the mathematics text
book you base these claims on. You are not, obviously, relying on some
half-baked half-remembered misconception of something you never
actually read in a maths textbook, are you?

> ... The fact that we can trace this
> impenetrably ignorant superstition back to such a luminary as
Leonhard
> Euler, who said in one of his most quoted dissertations, "There is no

> doubt that any quantity can be diminished until it vanishes and is
> transformed into nothing", is really no excuse for its perpetuation.

Right. What an absurdity! I mean, next someone will suggest that a
quantity might increase until it exceeds 2. Do you realise that if pi
increased until it exceeded 4, oranges stacked at the greengrocers
would *literally* all explode.


> Consider: If *at any point* applying division to a finite quantity
> results in zero, that point is as much where you are as, well, as
this
> point is where I am.

Where did you say you are? Do you mean that the result of a division
might depend on one's geographical location?

> Or, if you persist in asserting that Euler was right, what *exactly*
is
> it about the words and concept, "without limit", that makes the magic

> happen, that transports us from the familiar world of 2+2=4 to a
world
> where four divided by something equals ("Alakazam!") nothing? Just
as
> though that four never was.

"Without limit"? Is there no end to nonsense? Why don't you take a
quantity, for example 3, and divide it by two repeatedly, then get back
to us when the process ends.

Sorry, you may not feel this answer helps you much. Well, there are
plenty of regular, er, contributors to sci.math who write things that
resemble what you say: Tony Orlow mentioned 1000... only the other day,
and he's going to write a book about the finite set of natural numbers,
its largest element, and many other things that might be useful to you.
Why don't you get together with him, and see if you agree on anything,
in your common quest to show that maths is wrong?

Brian Chandler
http://imaginatorium.org

.