Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!feeder.erje.net!eu.feeder.erje.net!news-1.dfn.de!news.dfn.de!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Gregory Ewing Newsgroups: comp.lang.python Subject: Re: Working with the set of real numbers Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2014 11:32:39 +1300 Lines: 18 Message-ID: References: <8e4c1ab1-e65d-483f-ad9d-6933ae2052c3@googlegroups.com> <888bd2fc-54b0-4c46-9d7b-d81d01a78b52@googlegroups.com> <52f59aeb$0$29972$c3e8da3$5496439d@news.astraweb.com> <7cc8f49d-a4c7-48c2-a0af-ac58c847d794@googlegroups.com> <71e578f8-0d23-4b8e-b9f2-b987bdc9c01d@googlegroups.com> <85r478bv99.fsf_-_@benfinney.id.au> <85ioskbtfm.fsf@benfinney.id.au> <85eh38bq5z.fsf@benfinney.id.au> <854n44blo9.fsf@benfinney.id.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: individual.net 1sFl2puxecmv/mhuNL9aEg9Mc6ShK6o3+ubAszR2htRTZ4Gxwj Cancel-Lock: sha1:4344b4GsTwP6n4C/OGtg31Lrq3Q= User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.5 (Macintosh/20050711) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en In-Reply-To: Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:66109 Chris Angelico wrote: > Of course a > computer can work with _some_ real numbers; but only some. (An awful > lot of them, of course. A ridiculously huge number of numbers. More > numbers than you could read in a lifetime! While the number is > extremely large, it still falls pitifully short of infinity.[1]) The number of integers it can work with is also vanishingly small compared to the total number of integers. However, the number of reals is vastly greater than the number of integers, so the proportion of reals it can work with is even *more* vanishingly small. In some sense. -- Greg