3 ms·

Most people are happy to accept 0.33333... is the same as one third and from there it's a quick hop to 3*0.3333...

iopq 10y ago
Well, that's if they accept that an infinitely repeating number is actually EQUAL to the fraction. Some people just accept that a non-infinite number will never equal the fraction, but don't understand the concept of infinite repetition as an actual number (point on the number scale), not an estimate.
mcbits 10y ago
It's easy to imagine that eating 1 out of 3 slices of pie is "the same" in a very specific sense as eating 333333... out of 1000000... slices of the same pie (although that would be infinity out of infinity slices, which is meaningless). What slips people up is that ignoring everything but the total pie consumed (taking the limit) is embedded in the definition of real numbers. There's an analogous story with rationals: Suppose x1 = 1, y1 = 3, x2 = 2, and y2 = 6. If we plot them, (x1, y1) and (x2, y2) are clearly different points, but x1/y1 "equals" x2/y2 because they lie on the same line through the origin. We decide that we don't need to know about those individual points.
umanwizard 10y ago
If people accept 0.33... = 1/3 but not 0.99... = 1, they are being logically inconsistent. A "proof" that just plays a trick on people's logically inconsistent assumptions to derive a result isn't very satisfying. You're not really uncovering anything fundamental through that proof, just playing games. Edit: what I mean to say is there are reasonable things "..." could mean such that .99... and .33... are both not equal to 1 and 1/3, respectively. But there are none for which one pair is equal and the other not, as you rightly point out. So all your proof does is show that the other person's viewpoint is inconsistent, but it doesn't give any evidence for one of the two consistent viewpoints over the other.
dantillberg 10y ago
I didn't quite accept that until I challenged a professor in a 300-level university math class. This came up in class, and I spoke up and was like, "no, that can't be true, because 0.3333 repeated N times will never equal 1/3." Up to that point, I had only a fuzzy notion in my mind of what 0.33333... even was or how it was defined. But the professor helped clear this up for me: that "infinitely-repeating decimals" was actually just shorthand for a limit definition, i.e. "0.333..." is defined to be the limit as N approaches infinity of (3/10^1)+(3/10^2)+...+(3/10^N).

iopq 10y ago

Well, that's if they accept that an infinitely repeating number is actually EQUAL to the fraction. Some people just accept that a non-infinite number will never equal the fraction, but don't understand the concept of infinite repetition as an actual number (point on the number scale), not an estimate.

mcbits 10y ago

It's easy to imagine that eating 1 out of 3 slices of pie is "the same" in a very specific sense as eating 333333... out of 1000000... slices of the same pie (although that would be infinity out of infinity slices, which is meaningless). What slips people up is that ignoring everything but the total pie consumed (taking the limit) is embedded in the definition of real numbers. There's an analogous story with rationals: Suppose x1 = 1, y1 = 3, x2 = 2, and y2 = 6. If we plot them, (x1, y1) and (x2, y2) are clearly different points, but x1/y1 "equals" x2/y2 because they lie on the same line through the origin. We decide that we don't need to know about those individual points.

umanwizard 10y ago

If people accept 0.33... = 1/3 but not 0.99... = 1, they are being logically inconsistent. A "proof" that just plays a trick on people's logically inconsistent assumptions to derive a result isn't very satisfying. You're not really uncovering anything fundamental through that proof, just playing games. Edit: what I mean to say is there are reasonable things "..." could mean such that .99... and .33... are both not equal to 1 and 1/3, respectively. But there are none for which one pair is equal and the other not, as you rightly point out. So all your proof does is show that the other person's viewpoint is inconsistent, but it doesn't give any evidence for one of the two consistent viewpoints over the other.

dantillberg 10y ago

I didn't quite accept that until I challenged a professor in a 300-level university math class. This came up in class, and I spoke up and was like, "no, that can't be true, because 0.3333 repeated N times will never equal 1/3." Up to that point, I had only a fuzzy notion in my mind of what 0.33333... even was or how it was defined. But the professor helped clear this up for me: that "infinitely-repeating decimals" was actually just shorthand for a limit definition, i.e. "0.333..." is defined to be the limit as N approaches infinity of (3/10^1)+(3/10^2)+...+(3/10^N).