3 ms·
Something I found interesting, once you understand the proof of why there are "more" real numbers than integers, it becomes easy to see that the p-adic numbers[
by version_five 3y ago
Something I found interesting, once you understand the proof of why there are "more" real numbers than integers, it becomes easy to see that the p-adic numbers[0], which can have infinite digits to the left of the decimal, but finite digits to the right, have the same cardinality as the real numbers (there are more of them than integers).
This was unintuitive to me when I first thought about it, because I pictured a whole number (no fractional part) even with infinite digits, to be in the natural numbers, but in fact it's not. Or put another way, whole numbers with infinite non-terminating non-repeating digits are not natural numbers
[0] https://divisbyzero.com/2008/11/24/what-are-p-adic-numbers/ https://divisbyzero.com/2008/11/24/what-are-p-adic-numbers/
- Dylan16807 3y agoI'd say there's a nice intuitive explanation: If you write numbers backwards, it doesn't change how many there are. And a p-adic number is pretty close to writing a real backwards. The further left a digit is, the less meaningful it is, etc.