820
I just cited myself. (mander.xyz)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[+] -12 points 2 years ago (2 children)

1/3 is rational.

.3333....... is not. You can't treat fractions the same as our base 10 number system. They don't all have direct conversions. Hence, why you can have a perfect fraction of a third, but not a perfect 1/3 written out in base 10.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago

    0.333... exactly equals 1/3 in base 10. What you are saying is factually incorrect and literally nonsense. You learn this in high school level math classes. Link literally any source that supports your position.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    .333... is rational.

    at least we finally found your problem: you don't know what rational and irrational mean. the clue is in the name.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    TBH the name is a bit misleading. Same for "real" numbers. And oh so much more so for "normal numbers".

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    not really. i get it because we use rational to mean logical, but that's not what it means here. yeah, real and normal are stupid names but rational numbers are numbers that can be represented as a ratio of two numbers. i think it's pretty good.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    I know all of that, but it's still misleading. It's not a dumb name by any means, but it still causes confusion often (as evidenced by many comments here)

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    fair enough, but i think the confusion for that commenter comes from a misunderstanding of the definition of the mathematical concept rather than the meaning of the English word. they just think irrational numbers are those that have infinite decimal digits, which is not the definition.

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