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Ah good, because the sort of rubbish I suspect OP is referring to also usually contains "no amount" of mathematics too :)
by usgroup 3y ago
Ah good, because the sort of rubbish I suspect OP is referring to also usually contains "no amount" of mathematics too :)
- shiandow 3y agoAs a mathematician I'd point out that 'None' is also an amount ;-)
- usgroup 3y agoPedantry on my part, but would you say that a non-existent unicorn weigh some amount "None"? That'd be strange to me, and "no amount" would describe such a situation.
- shiandow 3y agoThat hypothetical has very little to do with the situation at hand. Badd software clearly exists and it is possible to talk about how much mathematics went in it. If no mathematics went in that's still an inidication of 'how much' and therefore is an amount.
- usgroup 3y ago"A non-existent amount of mathematics" -- which the joke could have been interpreted as implying -- is not zero mathematics: that would be an existent amount. Another place these semantics arise is in talk about probability and possibility, wherein the possible can have zero probability (e.g. any specific value in a continuous probability distribution), but the impossible cannot have a zero probability because by definition it is outside the set of "possible events" (measure theoretically). Both make little intuitive sense.