MathGroup Archive 2010

[Date Index] [Thread Index] [Author Index]

Search the Archive

Re: Re: Re: algebraic numbers

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg106237] Re: [mg106220] Re: [mg106192] Re: algebraic numbers
  • From: DrMajorBob <btreat1 at austin.rr.com>
  • Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 05:57:14 -0500 (EST)
  • References: <200912290620.BAA02732@smc.vnet.net> <hhpl0g$9l1$1@smc.vnet.net>
  • Reply-to: drmajorbob at yahoo.com

Obviously, it DOES make them rational "in a sense"... the sense in which I  
mean it, for example.

Bobby

On Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:41:34 -0600, Andrzej Kozlowski <akoz at mimuw.edu.pl>  
wrote:

>
> On 6 Jan 2010, at 11:13, DrMajorBob wrote:
>
>> I completely understand that Mathematica considers 1.2 Real, not  
>> Rational... but that's a software design decision, not an objective  
>> fact.
>
> I think we are talking cross purposes. You seem to believe (correct me  
> if I am wrong) that numbers somehow "exist". Well, I have never seen one  
> - and that applies equally to irrational and rationals and even  
> (contrary to Kronecker) integers. I do not know what the number 3 looks  
> like, nor what 1/3 looks like (I know how we denote them, but that's not  
> the sam thing). So I do not think that the notion of "computer numbers"  
> makes any sense and hence to say that all computer numbers are rational  
> also does not make sense. There are only certain things that we  
> interpret as numbers and when we interpret them as rationals they are  
> rationals and when we interpret them as non-computable reals than they  
> are just that.
> Of course we know that a computer can only store a finite number of such  
> objects at a given time, but that fact in no sense makes them "rational".
>
> Andrzej Kozlowski


-- 
DrMajorBob at yahoo.com


  • Prev by Date: Re: Re: Re: algebraic numbers
  • Next by Date: Re: Re: Wrong ODE solution in Mathematica 7?
  • Previous by thread: Re: algebraic numbers
  • Next by thread: Re: Re: Re: algebraic numbers