(no subject)

[prog]

Heh heh, pages upon pages of people going No... NO! Aaaaaagh you're all wrong shut up about the .999... thing. This is worse/more amusing than the time that the Monty Hall problem was AOTD.

I find it interesting that the text of the article actually predicts the belief-path the doubters take... when faced with simple and easily graspable proofs, they change their minds and state that obviously this means that the number system is broken.

Comments

[cnoocy]

Wow. That's too much fun. Must stop reading.

[dictator555.livejournal.com]

Hum. Admittedly I only read the original page and not the arguments. And frankly, I only skimmed once I got to the beginning of the calculus proof, because I don't remember calculus at all. (Happily.) But, ah, you know I don't believe in numbers, right? I mean, I think the system is broken because it's based on numbers, and all numbers are broken.

Can we still be friends?

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I give up, what does AOTD mean?

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

OMGSTFUN00B! The stupid! The self-righteous! It burns!

This must be the reason mathematicians are traditionally such loners...

[radtea.livejournal.com]

And like the Monte Hall problem, the failure of people to understand is really helped along by lousy pedagogy.

The Wikipedia article does a relatively good job of presenting the proof, but it would be far better if it started with a paragraph discussing multiple representations of numbers as a common occurence in all notational systems, so instead of seeming needlessly and pointlessly counter-intuitive when first introduced the equality of 0.999... and 1 would be presented to the reader as a previously unnoticed instance of a perfectly familiar and ordinary phenomenon.