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> Any given irrational number may not be possible to write down. There's no "may" about it! By definition an irrational number has an infinitely long decimal
by Aicy 5y ago
> Any given irrational number may not be possible to write down.
There's no "may" about it!
By definition an irrational number has an infinitely long decimal expantion that does not repeat, so none of them can be written down (other than in symbolic representations like pi)
- seoaeu 5y agoIn fact, since there are only a countably infinite number of symbolic representations but an uncountable number of irrational numbers, nearly all of them cannot be written down at all!
- Koshkin 5y agoIf you mean representations using finite sequences, sure. But the set of all infinite sequences (e.g., of digits) is uncountable.
- seoaeu 5y agoRepresenting a number as an infinite sequence of digits isn't helpful if you are trying to write down the number. You can't write an infinite number of digits after all
- Koshkin 5y agoBut then your point is the identical to the parent’s.
- Aicy 5y agoThat's the point. There is uncountably many infinite sequences, but we only have countably many symbolic representations, so we can't write most real numbers down even with infinite time.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]