Re: Military time (whoops!)

[Carl Distefano cld@xxxxxxxx]

Reply to note from David Auerbach  Sat, 17
Jun 2006 14:34:31 -0400

David:

> The quibbler wishes to quibble.

Hey, this whole thread is a quibble, so bring it on. :-)

> If that ellipsis is being used in the standard way in such
> decimal contexts, then 2359.9999999999... =
> 2359.999999999999999999... = 2359.9... = 0000 (and thus doesn't
> belong to the day before). If all you meant by the ellipsis
> was some unspecified by finite number of "9"'s, then what was
> said is right.

Gee, I had no idea that "0.9..." is the same as "1.0" or "1.0...".
It seems off to me, or at least unconventional. I thought the
convention was that rational numbers are not represented by
repeating decimals (except 0's). For example, 5/4 = 1.250...
(repeating 0), not 1.249... (repeating 9). I thought the repeating
decimals were only used to represent irrational numbers:
1/3=0.333... OTOH, I suspect that 0.9... with 9's to infinity HAS
to equal, or be defined to equal, 1 for the real number system to
hold together. Yes?

In any event, what I meant was an arbitrarily large but finite
number of 9's -- anything short of 0000.

--
Carl Distefano
cld@xxxxxxxx