Storm wrote:
> Please bear with me if I am not following a protocal for the group.
>
> My step daughter is in 9th grade math (she is in 7th grade).
> She asked me earlier in the week if .999 going off in to infinity is
> the same thing as 1.
>
> I said no. Close...but no.
> I am by far no pro at math.
> She insists its the same, because her math teacher said so...
>
> But, I do seem to remember a math teacher telling me that
> mathmatically, it can be the same as one. In reality it is not. He
> told me to think of two lines. To be parallel, the need to be the
> same distance apart...say 1. If they are .999999 apart...eventually
> they will meet. And, no matter how far out you go in to infinity,
> you still will not reach 1. Best I can think of is that this is a
> mathmatical concept, that
> exists on paper....
> Can anyone here give an answer that makes sense to me, or her?
> Thanks....
I'm a programmer and some new programmers have a hard time with floating
point numbers. Take, for example, the decimal number 0.1 In binary it is
..000110011... with the 0011 repeating forever. It can not be accureatly
represented in binary.
There are some numbers in decimal that are the same. Such as 1/3 which we
write as 0.33333... We can not accurately write them in decimal.
0.9999999.... is one such number which comes from adding 1/3 three times.
0.33333333.. + 0.333333.. + 0.33333333... = 0.99999999999...
Yet we know that 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 = 1.
0.999999... doesn't really exist in nature, just as 0.333333... doesn't
exist in nature, it is our mathematical system, the way we humans came up
with a numbering system, it is not perfect. And because 0.99999999.. is
not
an accurate representation of the number we need to realize that the
accurate representation is 1.0.
Lets see how to convert 0.99999999 to a fraction.
x = 0.9999999999
10x = 9.9999999999
Right? So what is 9x? 10x - x
9x = 9
divide both sides by 9
(9x) / 9 = 9 / 9
x = 1
--
Jim Langston
tazmaster@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
|
