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No, we don't count from 0. That's like saying we start counting a baker's cup from 0 because you can have half a cup.
by atwood22 4y ago
No, we don't count from 0. That's like saying we start counting a baker's cup from 0 because you can have half a cup.
- randomdata 4y agoIf we (speaking as a North American) count from 1, does that mean other cultures (e.g. Korean) count from 2?
- atwood22 4y agoNo, it just means we have a different notion of what a year is in regards to age. Similar to how different cultures can use different units of measurement for length, mass, etc.
- randomdata 4y agoYes, exactly. One of which carries an implicit zero indexing. The date of birth doesn't disappear just because you decided to use a different measuring device.
- atwood22 4y agoNo, it doesn’t carry an implicit 0 index. Measuring age (in the West) is like measuring distance. You start at 0, but that doesn’t mean the first item is at index 0.
- randomdata 4y agoIf you took a standard ruler, a measurer of distance and which has literal index marks painted on it, and placed items along it, the item found at the head of the ruler would be found at the 0th index. You're quite right that we think of birth and its anniversaries in the same way.
- samatman 4y agoBirthdays are literally indexed by the moment of birth as zero. You can't possibly be serious.
- kazinator 4y agoWhat do you do for a living, and why are they paying you not to understand this?
- atwood22 4y agoDo you know the definition of countable? A set S is countable if there is a one-to-one mapping from S to N where N is the natural numbers. Do you know that 0 is not a member of the natural numbers? We literally start counting at 1 by definition of countable.
- lupire 4y agoNope. Is the empty set countable? (Yes.) Dictionary: nat·u·ral num·bers the positive integers (whole numbers) 1, 2, 3, etc., and sometimes zero as well Countable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countable_set https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countable_set Set theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_number
- atwood22 4y agoFrom your own link on countable sets: > Equivalently, a set S is countable if there exists an injective function f : S → N from S to N; it simply means that every element in S corresponds to a different element in N. Defining N is usually done via a successor set, on which case 0 makes no sense to include.
- lupire 4y agoA successor set is the set of successors of... 0 or 1, depending on what you are doing.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kazinator 4y agoAn empty set is countable; it has an empty mapping to the natural numbers. Its cardinality is zero.
- kazinator 4y agoThe counting activity doesn't begin when the first item is registered; it begins when the counter is initialized to zero. A decision is made to begin counting, along with the realization that nothing has been counting yet. That's when counting has started. When the first item is seen, the counting is then continuing. Suppose your job is to count some events. You check in for work at 8:00 a.m., but the first event has not registered until noon. By your logic you should not be paid for four hours, because you're paid to count, and counting started at 1.
- atwood22 4y agoNo, the mathematical definition of counting (i.e. whether or not a set is countable) involves mapping to the natural numbers, which doesn’t include 0.
- kazinator 4y agoI don't think your definition is complete. We can count a set by mapping its elements to the natural numbers, and then identifying that number which is highest. However, we must have a provision for identifying zero as the highest when the set and mapping are empty.
- 8note 4y agoMath counting doesn't care where you start. You could start -400 if it's useful for the problem
- lupire 4y agoYou can name things however you want, but there is a canonical bijection to zero-based ordinals. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_number https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_number
- goatlover 4y agoWhat counter? You're saying a counter exists before people start counting? Is this a form of mathematical Platonism?
- emaginniss 4y agoOk, use the baker and cup as an example. If you have an empty cup and put half of a cup of flour in it, you now have 0.5 cups of flour. Notice the zero before the ".5". That is us, normal humans, realizing that until you add enough to have 1 of something, you have between 0 and 0.999 repeating.
- bregma 4y agoWhen I'm baking I start by zeroing the scale, then adding enough flour to reach 500 g (or whatever the recipe calls for). That's counting from zero.
- 8note 4y agoI start with a empty cup, then I fill it up to 1 cup. I then put it in an initially empty bowl
- samatman 4y agoYes this is correct! The milliliters in a baker's cup are a scale based on 0!