Re: "A better understanding of n / 0" - plz comment on this
- From: Tom <t_d_lowe@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 07:29:52 EDT
I'm going to offer my own opinion here.
I consider infinity a number. OK you can't do maths on it the same way... but you can do maths with it... it is fairly well defined. It is a result of math operations so I define it as a number.
I also consider +infinity to be the same as -infinity. You can head towards infinity from either direction. I am also happy with the term 'approaches -infinity' as short hand for 'approaches infinity in the -ve direction', but I consider infinity as one number. Similarly I consider infinity*i as the same number.
Taking the number line, I like to think of infinity connecting the +ve and -ve extreme values, so using a non-linear transformation (x=tan(theta)) you can draw the number line as a circle, with 0 at the bottom, infinity at the top, and 1 and -1 at each side.
so 1/0 = infinity, 1/infinity = 0, 1+infinity = infinity = i*infinity = 2*infinity.
then I consider
0*infinity = infinity/infinity = 0/0 = 'anything'
where 'anything' is another number (or concept if you don't like the word number). It equals the set of all numbers including 0 and infinity... which leads to
anything*0 = anything*infinity = anything/anything = anything*anything = anything.
how can a number be a set? well 1^0.5 is the set {-1,1}, so why not define 0/0 to be the set of all numbers.
anyway I'm going off track on my own musings about infinity
.
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