News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Poll: Does point 9 recurring equal one? by grandalf on Tuesday July 07, 2009 @07:47PM (#692891)
I interpreted repeating 9's as:

the function that writes some number of repeating 9's (replacing the zero in the last decimal place with a 9). This function approaches 1, does it not?

f(1) = 0.9

f(2) = 0.99

f(3) = 0.999

so f as defined above approaches 1

I interpreted the question in the context of numerical precision. Since we are usually not dealing with infinite precision, the two are not equal.

I am familiar with the obvious: 1/3 == 0.3333... and 3 * 1/3 == 1 so 0.9999... == 1

Re:Poll: Does point 9 recurring equal one? by darkxanthos on Tuesday July 07, 2009 @08:22PM (#692956)
ahhh No the OP was referring to the value at the limit as x->inf of your function f.
Re:Poll: Does point 9 recurring equal one? by grandalf on Tuesday July 07, 2009 @10:28PM (#693085)
huh?
Re:Poll: Does point 9 recurring equal one? by ErrantX on Wednesday July 08, 2009 @04:22AM (#693538)
he means f(infinity).

Were not at all dealing with f(very big numbers, increasing)

Re:Poll: Does point 9 recurring equal one? by grandalf on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @02:50PM (#704345)
Ok.. I guess I misunderstood the question.