this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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Science Memes

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[–] Mr_Fish@lemmy.world 89 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Where is i? Is it safe? Is it alright?

[–] kpw@kbin.social 19 points 1 year ago

Please stop talking about your imaginary girlfriend, it's embarrassing honestly.

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[–] ivanafterall@kbin.social 77 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nope, you fell for the classic sibling blunder:

What about INFINITY PLUS ONE!?

[–] Yondoza@sh.itjust.works 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

It's Infinity! Infinity -1? also infinity! Well what about infinity times infinity? Believe it or not, infinity! ♾️

[–] rockerface@lemm.ee 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Infinity gangsta when aleph null walks in

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[–] ApexHunter@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What about infinity times zero?

[–] rockerface@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago

For that one we're going to call my good friend L'Hôpital. That guy rules!

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[–] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 72 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Last time I saw this kind of challenge it was on reddit and I just replied with ℝ, but people brought up that this leaves out complex numbers. I'll now contend, however, that any number not included in that isn't real.

[–] morrowind@lemmy.ml 31 points 1 year ago (4 children)
[–] eestileib@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 year ago

Quaternions hello?

[–] hernanca@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What about quaternions and octonions and ...

[–] yetAnotherUser@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago

{x | x is a number}

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[–] BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago

Just like birds, complex numbers aren't real!

Screw you sqrt(-1), you aren't even a real number, you poser!

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[–] 768@sh.itjust.works 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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[–] veniasilente@lemm.ee 24 points 1 year ago (10 children)

Aren't there numbers past (plus/minus) infinity? Last I hear there's some omega stuff (for denoting numbers "past infinity") and it's not even the usual alpha-beta-omega flavour.

Come to think of it, is there even a notation for "the last possible number" in math? aka something that you just can't tack "+1" at the end of to make a new number?

[–] drbluefall@toast.ooo 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What you're probably thinking of is Ordinal numbers.

As for your second question, I don't think any "last number" could exist unless we explicitly declared one. And even then... I'm not sure what utility there would be in declaring a "last number".

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[–] humanplayer2@lemmy.ml 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Which of the infinities? There are many, many :D

The smallest infinity is the size of the natural numbers. That infinty, Aleph zero, is smaller than the infinity of the real numbers, Aleph one. "etc."

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_number

[–] veniasilente@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Which of the infinities? There are many, many :D

Oh no! Please don't tell me there are infinity infinities!

[–] weker01@feddit.de 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unfortunately yes there are and it's a very big infinity of infinties....

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[–] DoomBot5@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wait, they ran out of greek letters and started using Hebrew ones now? When did that happen?

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[–] kerrigan778@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

There is nothing "past" infinity, infinity is more a concept than a number, there are however many different kinds of infinity. And for the record, infinity + 1 = infinity, those are completely equal. Infinity + infinity = infinity x 2 = still the same kind of infinity. Infinity times infinity is debatably a different kind of infinity but there are fairly simple ways of showing it can be counted the same.

Essentially the number of numbers between 1 and 2 is the same as the number of numbers between 0 and infinity. They are still infinite.

[–] Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Hi, I'm a mathematician. My specialty is Algebra, and my research includes work with transfinites. While it's commonly said that infinity "isn't a number" I tend to disagree with this, since it often limits how people think about it. Furthermore, I always find it odd when people offer up alternatives to what infinity is; are numbers never concepts?

Regardless, here's the thing you're actually concretely wrong about: there are provably things bigger than infinity, and they are all bigger infinities. Furthermore, there are multiple kinds of transfinite algebra. Cardinal algebra behaves mostly like how you described, except every transfinite cardinal has a successor (e.g. There are countably many natural numbers and uncountably many complex numbers). Ordinal algebra, on the other hand, works very differently: if ω is the ordinal that corresponds to countable infinity, then ω+1>ω.

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[–] CJOtheReal@ani.social 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] Godort@lemm.ee 37 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i isn't a real number, you imagined it

[–] BolexForSoup@kbin.social 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

From gatekeeping to gaslighting in 2 comments. Not bad!

[–] Uncle_Bagel@midwest.social 6 points 1 year ago

What a girlboss

[–] callyral@pawb.social 5 points 1 year ago

not a real number

[–] hansl@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh you like math? Name all the sets of sets that don’t include themselves.

[–] zzx@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Russell is that you? Please stop breaking my formal systems

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[–] Stupidmanager@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] morrowind@lemmy.ml 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

[0-9]*\.?[0-9]*

edit: ok no empty strings [0-9]+\.?[0-9]*

[–] amoistgrandpa@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That regex implies “” is a number

[–] dalekcaan@lemm.ee 21 points 1 year ago

If I had a nickel for every time that happened I'd have "" nickels.

[–] dsemy@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I didn't realize '.' is a number.

\([0-9]+\.[0-9]\)?[0-9]* is more accurate I think.

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[–] Bizarroland@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago

You also have to remember to put the +C at the end

[–] edinbruh@feddit.it 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago
[–] callyral@pawb.social 7 points 1 year ago
[–] waigl@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (4 children)
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Fred.

(∀x:Number(x)=T)(Name(x)="Fred")

I name every number Fred.

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