News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The Math Myth by rntz on Saturday September 03, 2016 @09:29AM (#12419121)
You don't need to understand anything about infinitesimals to understand 0.999... = 1. Perhaps you meant limits? The "standard" approach would be to point out that Σ_{i=1}^∞ 9/(10^i) = 1 (that is, the sum from i = 1 to infinity of 9/(10^i) is 1), and understanding an infinite summation requires the concept of a limit. (Of course, there are simpler proofs that use only basic algebra and intuition about decimals; a limit is just the most direct approach.)

You're spot-on about needing to understand there's a distinction between a number and its decimal representation, though.

Re:The Math Myth by soVeryTired on Saturday September 03, 2016 @09:58AM (#12419208)
Limits use a construction that's pretty similar to an infinitesimal. The epsilon-delta definition of a limit is no joke for students.
Re:The Math Myth by alejohausner on Saturday September 03, 2016 @10:56AM (#12419413)
Oddly enough, I never understood the epsilon-delta description of limits until I read David Foster Wallace's book on infinity. All through my degree in math I was taught about things without learning the historical context that created those things.
Re:The Math Myth by SomeStupidPoint on Saturday September 03, 2016 @02:19PM (#12420344)
I'm always super happy that I stumbled in to taking topology before real analysis.

It meant that I understood the topological idea of limits before I had to do proofs using just the epsilon (for sequence) or epsilon-delta (for functions) definition, and so could translate the logic of showing things about neighborhoods in to the terminology of (real analysis) limits.

Limits, in the abstract, are a fairly simple concept: in the case of sequences, for any neighborhood of the limit, the entire tail of the sequence (past some point) is contained in the neighborhood; in the case of functions, for any neighborhood of the limit at f(x), there's a neighborhood around x, such that every point in that neighborhood maps to the neighborhood around the limit.

Re:The Math Myth by geoka9 on Saturday September 03, 2016 @02:13PM (#12420306)
Getting a degree in math without understanding epsilon-delta is quite an achievement! I am serious.