Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!nntp.club.cc.cmu.edu!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!panix!not-for-mail From: Grant Edwards Newsgroups: comp.lang.python Subject: Re: Working with the set of real numbers (was: Finding size of Variable) Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2014 19:13:01 +0000 (UTC) Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC Lines: 25 Message-ID: References: <8e4c1ab1-e65d-483f-ad9d-6933ae2052c3@googlegroups.com> <53153e66$0$24931$e4fe514c@dreader36.news.xs4all.nl> <531688b1$0$25064$e4fe514c@dreader37.news.xs4all.nl> <53169cd9$0$2923$c3e8da3$76491128@news.astraweb.com> <5316d7a0$0$2923$c3e8da3$76491128@news.astraweb.com> <53176225$0$29987$c3e8da3$5496439d@news.astraweb.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: dsl.comtrol.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: reader1.panix.com 1394046781 13794 64.122.56.22 (5 Mar 2014 19:13:01 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2014 19:13:01 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: slrn/1.0.1 (Linux) Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:67871 On 2014-03-05, Chris Kaynor wrote: > On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 9:43 AM, Steven D'Aprano < > steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> wrote: > >> At one time, Euler summed an infinite series and got -1, from which he >> concluded that -1 was (in some sense) larger than infinity. I don't know >> what justification he gave, but the way I think of it is to take the >> number line from -∞ to +∞ and then bend it back upon itself so that there >> is a single infinity, rather like the projective plane only in a single >> dimension. If you start at zero and move towards increasingly large >> numbers, then like Buzz Lightyear you can go to infinity and beyond: >> >> 0 -> 1 -> 10 -> 10000 -> ... ∞ -> ... -10000 -> -10 -> -1 -> 0 >> > > This makes me think that maybe the universe is using ones or two complement > math (is there a negative zero?)... If the Universe (like most all Python implementations) is using IEEE-754 floating point, there is. -- Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! This PIZZA symbolizes at my COMPLETE EMOTIONAL gmail.com RECOVERY!!