Adopey.1984
net.math
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!duke!unc!dopey.bts
Fri Mar 19 10:44:09 1982
You Can Too Be A Math Genius
I'm a little disappointed by all the attacks on davy's
"You Too Can Be A Math Genius". I found it upsetting when,
long ago in elementary school, a teacher told me that
9999... was the same thing as 1. The argument that they
must be the same since I can't tell you what their differ-
ence is-- except for conceding it to be 0-- is far from con-
vincing. I can't write down a name for most real numbers,
but that's no reason to doubt their existence.
In defense of the naive intuition that davy and I-- and
perhaps others who won't admit to it-- once shared, I've
written up a short description of how to try to formalize
the belief that .9999... is "almost the same, but a little
less". It's just over 100 lines, and it mentions such nasty
things as "ultrafilters" and the like. Still, I don't think
there's anything in it grossly wrong or likely to cause
cancer in readers.
It follows after this warning.
Bruce T. Smith, UNC-CH
(...!duke!unc!bts)
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