4 ms·
This is a goldmine. "Assuming any real number can be represented using base 10 (this is of course false, since it is not possible to represent all real numbers
by chancho 17y ago
This is a goldmine.
"Assuming any real number can be represented using base 10 (this is of course false, since it is not possible to represent all real numbers in any given radix system)" So that bit in parens pretty much refutes his whole post.
And the tree: "One can traverse it sequentially..." Go depth-first or in-order and you'll never get off the left spine. Go breadth-first and you'll never get past the first level because the root has (countably) infinitely many children. This is actually a very intuitive argument for why the reals (oops I mean decimals) are not countable.
And the "refutation" of Cantor's argument of the reals is fun too. I've never read the original argument, but I always figured that you're supposed to jump over the entries i/j for which i and j are not relatively prime. They're easy enough to spot. I can't be 100% sure my logic is sound, but I'm sure this guy's isn't.