4 ms·

Well, almost...

• filmor 8y ago
  Nope, exactly. The measure of the interval [0, 1] excluding any countable subset (for example all rational numbers) is still exactly 1, that's usually what mathematicians mean by "almost every", here "almost every real number in [0, 1] is irrational" :)
  • function_seven 8y ago
    I was joking, but to a point. The problem is that "100%" =/= "All". But most of the time, it is considered to be equivalent. The "almost all" phrase is used instead of "100%" precisely because dividing by infinity doesn't yield a useful result in some contexts. In more... "conventional" cases, if I tell you that 100% of the items are blue, you can conclude that none of them are red. With the intermingling of countable and uncountable sets, this statement fails. You have a situation where 100% of the items in the superset are blue, and there are also some red ones. So it's "almost 100%" in the same way it's "almost all". I'm using the word "almost" to mean "infinitesimally close to"