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I just cited myself.
(mander.xyz)
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this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2024
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No, it equals 0.999...
2/9 = 0.222... 7/9 = 0.777...
0.222... + 0.777... = 0.999... 2/9 + 7/9 = 1
0.999... = 1
No, it equals 1.
Similarly, 1/3 = 0.3333…
So 3 times 1/3 = 0.9999… but also 3/3 = 1
Another nice one:
Let x = 0.9999… (multiply both sides by 10)
10x = 9.99999… (substitute 0.9999… = x)
10x = 9 + x (subtract x from both sides)
9x = 9 (divide both sides by 9)
x = 1
My favorite thing about this argument is that not only are you right, but you can prove it with math.
Not a proof, just wrong. In the "(substitute 0.9999… = x)" step, it was only done to one side, not both (the left side would've become 9.99999), therefore wrong.
They multiplied both sides by 10.
0.9999... times 10 is 9.9999...
X times 10 is 10x.
10x is 9.9999999....
As I said, they didn't substitute on both sides, only one, thus breaking the rules around rearranging algebra. Anything you do to one side you have to do to the other.
That's the best explanation of this I've ever seen, thank you!
That's more convoluted than the 1/3, 2/3, 3/3 thing.
3/3 = 0.99999...
3/3 = 1
If somebody still wants to argue after that, don't bother.
Nah that explanation is basically using an assumption to prove itself. You need to first prove that 1/3 does in fact equal .3333... which can be done using the 'convoluted' but not so convoluted proof
Sure, when you start decoupling the numbers from their actual values. The only thing this proves is that the fraction-to-decimal conversion is inaccurate. Your floating points (and for that matter, our mathematical model) don't have enough precision to appropriately model what the value of 7/9 actually is. The variation is negligible though, and that's the core of this, is the variation off what it actually is is so small as to be insignificant and, really undefinable to us - but that doesn't actually matter in practice, so we just ignore it or convert it. But at the end of the day 0.999... does not equal 1. A number which is not 1 is not equal to 1. That would be absurd. We're just bad at converting fractions in our current mathematical understanding.
Edit: wow, this has proven HIGHLY unpopular, probably because it's apparently incorrect. See below for about a dozen people educating me on math I've never heard of. The "intuitive" explanation on the Wikipedia page for this makes zero sense to me largely because I don't understand how and why a repeating decimal can be considered a real number. But I'll leave that to the math nerds and shut my mouth on the subject.
You are just wrong.
The rigorous explanation for why 0.999...=1 is that 0.999... represents a geometric series of the form 9/10+9/10^2+... by definition, i.e. this is what that notation literally means. The sum of this series follows by taking the limit of the corresponding partial sums of this series (see here) which happens to evaluate to 1 in the particular case of 0.999... this step is by definition of a convergent infinite series.
No number is getting converted, it's the same number in both cases but written in a different representation. 4 is also the same number as IV, no conversion going on it's still the natural number elsewhere written
S(S(S(S(Z)))). Also decimal representation isn't inaccurate, it just happens to have multiple valid representations for the same number.Good then that 0.999... and 1 are not numbers, but representations.
Lol I fucking love that successor of zero
It still equals 1, you can prove it without using fractions:
x = 0.999...
10x = 9.999...
10x = 9 + 0.999...
10x = 9 + x
9x = 9
x = 1
There's even a Wikipedia page on the subject
I hate this because you have to subtract .99999..... from 10. Which is just the same as saying 10 - .99999.... = 9
Which is the whole controversy but you made it complicated.
It would be better just to have them do the long subtraction
If they don't get it and keep trying to show you how you are wrong they will at least be out of your hair until forever.
You don't subtract from 10, but from 10x0.999.... I mean your statement is also true but it just proves the point further.
No, you do subtract from 9.999999....
If they aren't equal, there should be a number in between that separates them. Between 0.1 and 0.2 i can come up with 0.15. Between 0.1 and 0.15 is 0.125. You can keep going, but if the numbers are equal, there is nothing in between. There's no gap between 0.1 and 0.1, so they are equal.
What number comes between 0.999... and 1?
(I used to think it was imprecise representations too, but this is how it made sense to me :)
My brother. You are scared of infinities. Look up the infinite hotel problem. I will lay it out for you if you are interested.
Image you are incharge of a hotel and it has infinite rooms. Currently your hotel is at full capacity... Meaning all rooms are occupied. A new guest arrives. What do you do? Surely your hotel is full and you can't take him in... Right? WRONG!!! You tell the resident of room 1 to move to room 2, you tell the resident of room 2 to move to room 3 and so on.... You tell the resident of room n to move to room n+1. Now you have room 1 empty
But sir... How did I create an extra room? You didn't. The question is the same as asking yourself that is there a number for which n+1 doesn't exist. The answer is no... I can always add 1.
Infinity doesn't behave like other numbers since it isn't technically a number.
So when you write 0.99999.... You are playing with things that aren't normal. Maths has come with fuckall ways to deal with stuff like this.
Well you may say, this is absurd... There is nothing in reality that behaves this way. Well yes and no. You know how the building blocks of our universe obey quantum mechanics? The equations contain lots of infinities but only at intermediate steps. You have to "renormalise" them to make them go away. Nature apparently has infinities but likes to hide the from us.
The infinity problem is so fucked up. You know the reason physics people are unable to quantize gravity? Surely they can do the same thing to gravity as they did to say electromagnetic force? NOPE. Gravitation doesn't normalise. You get left with infinities in your final answer.
Anyways. Keep on learning, the world has a lot of information and it's amazing. And the only thing that makes us human is the ability to learn and grow from it. I wish you all the very best.
When Hilbert runs the hotel, sure, ok. Once he sells the whole thing to an ultrafinitist however you suddenly notice that there's a factory there and all the rooms are on rails and infinity means "we have a method to construct arbitrarily more rooms", but they don't exist before a guest arrives to occupy them.
It's a correct proof.
One way to think about this is that we represent numbers in different ways. For example, 1 can be 1.0, or a single hash mark, or a dot, or 1/1, or 10/10. All of them point to some platonic ideal world version of the concept of the number 1.
What we have here is two different representations of the same number that are in a similar representation. 1 and 0.999... both point to the same concept.
I strongly agree with you, and while the people replying aren't wrong, they're arguing for something that I don't think you said.
1/3 ≈ 0.333... in the same way that approximating a circle with polygons of increasing side number has a limit of a circle, but will never yeild a circle with just geometry.
0.999... ≈ 1 in the same way that shuffling infinite people around an infinite hotel leaves infinite free rooms, but if you try to do the paperwork, no one will ever get anywhere.
Decimals require you to check the end of the number to see if you can round up, but there never will be an end. Thus we need higher mathematics to avoid the halting problem. People get taught how decimals work, find this bug, and then instead of being told how decimals are broken, get told how they're wrong for using the tools they've been taught.
If we just accept that decimals fail with infinite steps, the transition to new tools would be so much easier, and reflect the same transition into new tools in other sciences. Like Bohr's Atom, Newton's Gravity, Linnaean Taxonomy, or Comte's Positivism.
The character sequence "0.999..." is finite and you know you can round up because you've got those three dots at the end. I agree that decimals are a shit representation to formalise rational numbers in but it's not like using them causes infinite loops. Unless you insist on writing them, that is. You can compute with infinities just fine as long as you keep them symbolic.
That only breaks down with the reals where equality is fundamentally incomputable. Equality of the rationals and approximate equality of reals is perfectly computable though, the latter meaning that you can get equality to arbitrary, but not actually infinite, precision. You can specify a number of digits you want, you can say "don't take longer than ten seconds to compute", any kind of bound. Once the precision goes down to plank lengths I think any reasonable engineer would build a bridge with it.
...sometimes I do think that all those formalists with all those fancy rules about fancy limits are actually way more confused about infinity than freshman CS students.
Eh, if you need special rules for 0.999... because the special rules for all other repeating decimals failed, I think we should just accept that the system doesn't work here. We can keep using the workaround, but stop telling people they're wrong for using the system correctly.
The deeper understanding of numbers where 0.999... = 1 is obvious needs a foundation of much more advanced math than just decimals, at which point decimals stop being a system and are just a quirky representation.
Saying decimals are a perfect system is the issue I have here, and I don't think this will go away any time soon. Mathematicians like to speak in absolutely terms where everything is either perfect or discarded, yet decimals seem to be too simple and basal to get that treatment. No one seems to be willing to admit the limitations of the system.
Noone in the right state of mind uses decimals as a formalisation of numbers, or as a representation when doing arithmetic.
But the way I learned decimal division and multiplication in primary school actually supported periods. Spotting whether the thing will repeat forever can be done in finite time. Constant time, actually.
No. If you can accept that 1/3 is 0.333... then you can multiply both sides by three and accept that 1 is 0.99999.... Primary school kids understand that. It's a bit odd but a necessary consequence if you restrict your notation from supporting an arbitrary division to only divisions by ten. And that doesn't make decimal notation worse than rational notation, or better, it makes it different, rational notation has its own issues like also not having unique forms (2/6 = 1/3) and comparisons (larger/smaller) not being obvious. Various arithmetic on them is also more complicated.
The real take-away is that depending on what you do, one is more convenient than the other. And that's literally all that notation is judged by in maths: Is it convenient, or not.
I never commented on the convenience or usefulness of any method, just tried to explain why so many people get stuck on 0.999... = 1 and are so recalcitrant about it.
This is a workaround of the decimal flaw using algebraic logic. Trying to hold both systems as fully correct leads to a conflic, and reiterating the algebraic logic (or any other proof) is just restating the problem.
The problem goes away easily once we understand the limits of the decimal system, but we need to state that the system is limited! Otherwise we get conflicting answers and nothing makes sense.
But the system is not limited: It has a representation for any rational number. Subjectively you may consider it inelegant, you may consider its use in some area inconvenient, but it is formally correct and complete.
I bet there's systems where rational numbers have unique representations (never looked into it), and I also bet that they're awkward AF to use in practice.
The representation has to reflect algebraic logic, otherwise it would indeed be flawed. It's the algebraic relationships that are primary to numbers, not the way in which you happen to put numbers onto paper.
And, honestly, if you can accept that 1/3 == 2/6, what's so surprising about decimal notation having more than one valid representation for one and the same number? If we want our results to look "clean" with rational notation we have to normalise the fraction from 2/6 to 1/3, and if we want them to look "clean" with decimal notation we, well, have to normalise the notation, from 0.999... to 1. Exact same issue in a different system, and noone complains about.
Decimals work fine to represent numbers, it's the decimal system of computing numbers that is flawed. The "carry the 1" system if you prefer. It's how we're taught to add/subtract/multiply/divide numbers first, before we learn algebra and limits.
This is the flawed system, there is no method by which 0.999... can become 1 in here. All the logic for that is algebraic or better.
My issue isn't with 0.999... = 1, nor is it with the inelegance of having multiple represetations of some numbers. My issue lies entirely with people who use algebraic or better logic to fight an elementary arithmetic issue.
People are using the systems they were taught, and those systems are giving an incorrect answer. Instead of telling those people they're wrong, focus on the flaws of the tools they're using.
Of course there is a method. You might not have been taught in school but you should blame your teachers for that, and noone else. The rule is simple: If you have a nine as repeating decimal, replace it with a zero and increment the digit before that.
That's it. That's literally all there is to it.
It's not any more of an arithmetic issue than 2/6 == 1/3: As I already said, you need an additional normalisation step. The fundamental issue is that rational numbers do not have unique representations in the systems we're using.
And, in fact, normalisation in decimal representation is way easier, as the only case to worry about is indeed the repeating nine. All other representations are unique while in the fractional system, all numbers have infinitely many representations.
Maths teachers are constantly wrong about everything. Especially in the US which single-handedly gave us the abomination that is PEMDAS.
Instead of blaming mathematicians for talking axiomatically, you should blame teachers for not teaching axiomatic thinking, of teaching procedure instead of laws and why particular sets of laws make sense.
That method I described to get rid of the nines is not mathematical insight. It teaches you nothing. You're not an ALU, you're capable of so much more than that, capable of deeper understanding that rote rule application. Don't sell yourself short.
EDIT: Bijective base-10 might be something you want to look at. Also, I was wrong, there's way more non-unique representations: 0002 is the same as 2. Damn obvious, that's why it's so easy to overlook. Dunno whether it easily extends to fractions can't be bothered to think right now.
I don't really care how many representations a number has, so long as those representations make sense. 2 = 02 = 2.0 = 1+1 = -1+3 = 8/4 = 2x/x. That's all fine, we can use the basic rules of decimal notation to understand the first three, basic arithmetic to understand the next three, and basic algebra for the last one.
0.999... = 1 requires more advanced algebra in a pointed argument, or limits and infinite series to resolve, as well as disagreeing with the result of basic decimal notation. It's steeped in misdirection and illusion like a magic trick or a phishing email.
I'm not blaming mathematicians for this, I am blaming teachers (and popular culture) for teaching that tools are inflexible, instead of the limits of those systems.
In this whole thread, I have never disagreed with the math, only it's systematic perception, yet I have several people auguing about the math with me. It's as if all math must be regarded as infinitely perfect, and any unbelievers must be cast out to the pyre of harsh correction. It's the dogmatic rejection I take issue with.
You're used to one but not the other. You convinced yourself that because one is new or unacquainted it is hard, while the rest is not. The rule I mentioned Is certainly easier that 2x/x that's actual algebra right there.
Why, yes. I totally can see your point about decimal notation being awkward in places though I doubt there's a notation that isn't, in some area or the other, awkward, and decimal is good enough. We're also used to it, that plays a big role in whether something is judged convenient.
On the other hand 0.9999... must be equal to 1. Because otherwise the system would be wrong: For the system to be acceptable, for it to be infinitely perfect in its consistency with everything else, it must work like that.
And that's what everyone's saying when they're throwing "1/3 = 0.333.... now multiply both by three" at you: That 1 = 0.9999... is necessary. That it must be that way. And because it must be like that, it is like that. Because the integrity of the system trumps your own understanding of what the rules of decimal notation are, it trumps your maths teacher, it trumps all the Fields medallists. That integrity is primal, it's always semantics first, then figure out some syntax to support it (unless you're into substructural logics, different topic). It's why you see mathematicians use the term "abuse of notation" but never "abuse of semantics".
Very rarely wrong actually.
The only people who think there's something wrong with PEMDAS are people who have forgotten one or more rules of Maths.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLCDca6dYpA
...oh wait I remember that Unicody user name. It's you. Didn't I already explain to you the difference between syntax and semantics until you gave up. I suggest we don't do it again but instead, you review the thread.
Well, you seem to have forgotten that the woman in that video isn't a Maths teacher, which would explain why she's forgotten the rules of The Distributive Law and Terms.
I didn't give up, you did.
I suggest you check some Maths textbooks, instead of listening to a Physics major.
There! Syntax. We went over this. Seriously, we did, and, no, I got the last word.
I can check any textbook from any discipline. You know what? I could even ask my school teachers. Because I'm not American and I wasn't taught shit that doesn't match up with what professionals are doing.
You're just another yank drunk on jingoism, "We do it like that, therefore, it is right".
BWAHAHAHA! I see you still didn't learn to check facts first. 😂😂😂
P.S.
Yep, Maths teachers do it right. :-)
P.S. you proved my point
When there's an incorrect answer it's because the user has made a mistake.
They were wrong, and I told them where they went wrong (did something to one side of the equation and not the other).
The system works perfectly, it just looks wonky in base 10. In base 3 0.333... looks like 0.1, exactly 0.1
Oh the fundamental math works fine, it's the imperfect representation that is infinite decimals that is flawed. Every base has at least one.
That does very accurately sum up my understanding of the matter, thanks. I haven't been adding on to any of the other conversation in order to avoid putting my foot in my mouth further, but you've pretty much hit the nail on the head here. And the higher mathematics required to solve this halting problem are beyond me.
THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I SAID.