0.999… = 1 an Infinitesimal Explanation Bryan Dawson
0 1 2 0.9999999999999999 0.999… = 1 An Infinitesimal Explanation Bryan Dawson know the proofs, but I still don’t What exactly does that mean? Just as real num- believe it.” Those words were uttered bers have decimal expansions, with one digit for each to me by a very good undergraduate integer power of 10, so do hyperreal numbers. But the mathematics major regarding hyperreals contain “infinite integers,” so there are digits This fact is possibly the most-argued- representing not just (the 237th digit past “Iabout result of arithmetic, one that can evoke great the decimal point) and (the 12,598th digit), passion. But why? but also (the Yth digit past the decimal point), According to Robert Ely [2] (see also Tall and where is a negative infinite hyperreal integer. Vinner [4]), the answer for some students lies in their We have four 0s followed by a 1 in intuition about the infinitely small: While they may the fifth decimal place, and also where understand that the difference between and 1 is represents zeros, followed by a 1 in the Yth less than any positive real number, they still perceive a decimal place. (Since we’ll see later that not all infinite nonzero but infinitely small difference—an infinitesimal hyperreal integers are equal, a more precise, but also difference—between the two. And it’s not just uglier, notation would be students; most professional mathematicians have not or formally studied infinitesimals and their larger setting, the hyperreal numbers, and as a result sometimes Confused? Perhaps a little background information wonder .
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