A question of numbers (one for the maths fans)

QUOTE Blue is not just a wavelength of light. It is how our brains interpret that wave length when viewed through our eyes. Which is a separate thing from the actual wave length of blue light.QUOTEif blues is seperate from the light wave , can i have a pound of blue please ...or in a pitch black totally unilluminated room can you tell if the floor is blue or not ..without the use of light waves .if i burn a sheet of blue paper , and retain all the atoms of the original blue sheet , where does the blue go ?sorry got total off topic ,if .999999... is a number can i have a 0.99999.... ton block of lead ??Edited by ikabod, : No reason given.Edited by ikabod, : No reason given.

That wasn't n that was πIt might not be clear but that is pi.

It is a number. It is another way of writing 1.

Of course it is!

RiveRrat x= 0.999... 10x shifts the decimal place one value to the right so this equals 9.999... We need not concern ourselves with the infinity aspect of the values to the right of the decimal since all we need to know is that they are equal to one anotherLogically you can since both sides of the equation{after the decimal point} are infinite numbers and they are of equal value
.999... = .999... so subtracting equals from each other results in zero
Hence the only way for the equation to balance is for 10x to equal 9.999... and .999... to equal 1 QED

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Dear Mrs Chown, Ignore your son's attempts to teach you physics. Physics isn't the most important thing. Love is.Best wishes, Richard Feynman.

You don't have to subtract it digit by digit.(1) 9.999... -9 = 0.999...(1) can be accepted because we only have to subtract one digit, the integer nine. So there aren't an infinite number of digits to subtract.(2) But we also know that it's true that if a + b = c, then a -c = -b.Combine these (1) and (2) and you get:(3) 9.999... -0.999... = 9I don't have to perform the subtraction digit per digit in infinity to know this is true, because I know it follows logically from (1) and (2), both of which don't include subtracting of digits in infinity.

Here you can read up on some of our discussions about sound and light. I think we covered most of it there.
If a tree falls

We can only approximate it.I use pi all the time, and 3.14 gets me close enough.

Well then what is it?While I'm at it I think part of your problem stems from your using a personal definition of infinity. What is your mathamatical definition of infinity?Btw do you accept that this is a well established proof in mathematics? i.e. recognized and accepted by mathematicians? So why would they do this if it's wrong? I suggest you need to update your math knowledge rather than try to change mathematics to fit your intuitive sense of how it should be.lfen

That's seems to be self contradictory. If you get why 0.999...=1, how can you not agree with the math? Sorry but I can't help it. 0.333... is not a whole number.You seem to have only a tenuous grasp of what a mathmatical proof is supposed to look like. isn't 0.333... accurate? why not? The digits don't have to go on and on one at a time. they can come all at once. ever heard of math recursion? can you explain to me how did you sneak god into the conversasion?

But pi is different from an infinetly repeating decimal. It is an infinetly nonrepeating decimal, which makes it irrational. This is the problem pythagoras ran into in Greece--they didn't like the concept of an irrational number (if I've got my history right). You can't write pi as a fraction, but you can .3333 to inifity.

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All a man's knowledge comes from his experiences

Well, the Egyptians and babylonians did write Pi as a series of fractions, and worked quite well with them.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

could you answer the question instead of dodging it? Sure it is not a member of the Z set. But not being an integer number doesn't make infinity non-existent.ever thought there might be other ways to do it besides longhand? ever wondered why it's called longhand? How does 0.999...=1 prevents infinity from existing?We are talking about pure math here. The fact that the number may or may not represent anything is completely besides the point.

Ok I'll try.0.999...Ok, I'm done. what was the fuss about?

Says who?Since you can't get the end of the number, then you never really know if it is equal or not. It is not an absolute.Can you prove infinity exists? Infinity - WikipediaI am in over my head here, and the conversation will get deeper than my knowledge. I do pocess the capability to figure this stuff out. I hope to go to college one day soon. I have been too busy with the school of life.But the way I see it, and this is from ignorance, it's not that 10 can't be divided by 3, it's that it can't be expressed correctly with our number system.I started reading about other number systems that can express it correctly, but I just don't have the time.Saying 0.9999... = 1 means that infinity resolves to something in this case. But infinity cannot resolve, it is suppose to go on and on. So I find there is a problem.