Here's your favorite ignoramus "reporter", Sneery O'Leary, trying to understand the mathematics of infinite sequences:
...Series terminate, according to their nature.
For example, the number 1 is the terminus of the natural numbers. It just is. There is no natural number below 1.* If you do not like that, you do not like reality.
Some series terminate because they depend on a higher or larger series at a certain point, one that governs them...
*0 is a placeholder, signifying: No number occupies this position.
Hopeless confusion in all measures here.
Sneery
- confuses sequences with series
- doesn't understand that the "natural numbers" often (but not always) are considered to contain the integer 0 (it's just a convention, and not one that is universally followed)
- thinks that 0 is not a number
- confuses the sequence of natural numbers with decimal representation of numbers
- thinks sequences always terminate
- etc.
But remember - her blog is the reliable source for news, destined to replace the New York Times!
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5 comments:
Even by O'Leary standards this is an extreme example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
(Although minor note- I don't see where she has confused numbers with their decimal represenations).
Joshua:
It's the "placeholder" business - that kind of word is only used when talking about the decimal representation of numbers, where 0 is sometimes called a "placeholder".
Ah yes, I see. Didn't catch that.
How bad , well this is meant for the three - four year old crowd
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pskxZbs4dR4
"0 is a placeholder, signifying: No number occupies this position."
Somebody forgot to tell that to Aryabhata. Or rather, somebody forgot to tell O' Leary about an (at least) 1500 year old mathematical discovery.
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