Time Travel / The infinatly repeating reality

[gringotsgoblin]

theres another way of showing this too:
(any 0.3333 or 0.999 etc number is recurring)

0.33333 = 1/3
0.33333 x 3 = 0.999999
1/3 x 3 = 3/3 = 1

now in what way does that not prove that 0.9999 recurring is equal to 1? theres nothing about infinitely small numbers etc, in reality it IS equal to 1...
ask any mathematician, he'll tell you the same thing

I see your point about 1/3 etc.

However if 0.9999 recurring is equal to 1, what is the purpose of having the value 0.9999 recurring?

It therefore strikes me that the fraction 1/3 is better able to describe the concept 'a third' than 0.33333 recurring. For as you quite rightly point out 0.33333 recurring multiplied by 3 doesnt exactly equal 1. It *almost* equals 1.

 

[gringotsgoblin]

I see your point about 1/3 etc.

However if 0.9999 recurring is equal to 1, what is the purpose of having the value 0.9999 recurring?

It therefore strikes me that the fraction 1/3 is better able to describe the concept 'a third' than 0.33333 recurring. For as you quite rightly point out 0.33333 recurring multiplied by 3 doesnt exactly equal 1. It *almost* equals 1.

Infuriatingly I have googled this very subject and I have read about 4 different mathematical proofs that state that 0.999~ = 1.

Intuitively this does not make any sense to me. However I appreciate that there is some clever maths behind it.

 

[MoTo^]

hehe
a lot of things dont make proper sense. the whole idea of 'infinity' cant really be grasped by the human mind if you think about it, yet we use it all the time to describe stuff. can you actually think of anything infinite in nature? or is it only something thats in the mind? (i can just about think of one example that might be calssified as infinite)

 

[Pestcontrol]

Ah thanks for the other example, that was the one my teacher showed me, like 8 years ago.

If you think about it, 0.3333333~ isn't 1/3 either, but infinitely close to one third, yet we take that for granted.

Also, 2/2 = 1 also, but there's still a point in having it. There is an answer, and then there's simplifying that answer.

I must say i've learned from all this, from not remembering to seeing it all clearly now, effectively infinite is the inverse (is that the word? x^-1) of zero


Here's another nice mind bender: If i have a collection ℕ, of all natural numbers numbers, and a connection A of all natural numbers above 7, does this mean i can say collection N has 8 more numbers in it (7 including the 0), even though both contain an infinite amount of numbers?

Infinity doesn't occur in nature i think, or means impossibility, like it takes infinite energy to travel at the speed of light (or rather, infinitely close to the speed of light, here we go again ). Regardless it's a thing you can calculate with and the results of these calculations can be very real. It's like negative numbers really, they don't exist, yet everyone is perfectly able to grasp the concept. Then there's the even wierder imagionary numbers, i'm not a mathematician but i've been told they have very real appliances in certain electric/electromagnetic calculations.