this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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Science Memes

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[–] Mr_Fish@lemmy.world 80 points 2 years ago (4 children)

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

[–] kpw@kbin.social 18 points 2 years ago

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

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[–] ivanafterall@kbin.social 71 points 2 years ago

Nope, you fell for the classic sibling blunder:

What about INFINITY PLUS ONE!?

[–] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 67 points 2 years ago (4 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 27 points 2 years ago (3 children)
[–] hernanca@beehaw.org 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What about quaternions and octonions and ...

[–] yetAnotherUser@feddit.de 5 points 2 years ago

{x | x is a number}

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[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 18 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] zzx@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

This image goes so hard

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[–] veniasilente@lemm.ee 24 points 2 years ago (6 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 25 points 2 years 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 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 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 2 years 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 2 years 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 2 years 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 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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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[–] KmlSlmk64@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago (3 children)

IIRC Depends if you talk about cardinal or ordinal numbers. What I remember: In cardinal numbers (the normal numbers we think of, which denote quantity, etc.) have their maximum in infinity. But in ordinal numbers (which denote order - first, second, etc.) Can go past infinity - the first after infinity is omega. Then omega +1. And then some bigger stuff, which I don't remember much, like aleph 0 and more.

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[–] CJOtheReal@ani.social 18 points 2 years ago (2 children)
[–] Godort@lemm.ee 32 points 2 years ago (1 children)

i isn't a real number, you imagined it

[–] BolexForSoup@kbin.social 20 points 2 years ago (1 children)

From gatekeeping to gaslighting in 2 comments. Not bad!

[–] Uncle_Bagel@midwest.social 6 points 2 years ago

What a girlboss

[–] callyral@pawb.social 4 points 2 years ago

not a real number

[–] hansl@lemmy.world 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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

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

Russell is that you? Please stop breaking my formal systems

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[–] Stupidmanager@lemmy.world 14 points 2 years ago (2 children)
[–] morrowind@lemmy.ml 18 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (6 children)

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

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

[–] amoistgrandpa@lemm.ee 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That regex implies “” is a number

[–] dalekcaan@lemm.ee 20 points 2 years ago

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

[–] dsemy@lemm.ee 5 points 2 years 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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[–] edinbruh@feddit.it 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] Bizarroland@kbin.social 10 points 2 years ago

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

[–] Ofosho@hexbear.net 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I thought it was 'R', for the set of all real numbers.

Oh, so complex numbers are not numbers now?!

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 years ago
[–] callyral@pawb.social 7 points 2 years ago
[–] waigl@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago (4 children)
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Fred.

(∀x:Number(x)=T)(Name(x)="Fred")

I name every number Fred.

[–] blanketswithsmallpox@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Which negative infinity or positive infinity includes zero?

[–] rbesfe@lemmy.ca 22 points 2 years ago

Brackets and a comma like that indicate a range, not just a list of 2 values

[–] wetnoodle@sopuli.xyz 11 points 2 years ago

It's certainly between them somewhere

[–] bfg9k@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

There is actually zero as well as negative zero for reasons beyond my comprehension

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