User talk:Huon/Archive1

I think you merit a canned welcome! Ahem:

Welcome!

Hello Huon/Archive1, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you have any questions, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome!  Melchoir 20:29, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hello all! Thanks, Melchoir, for the welcome. Up to now, I have just amused myself by contributing to the discussion about 0.999... and 1. It is rather surprising, but even though imho the opponents of 0.999...=1 lack mathematical training and rigor, making their contributions difficult to read, I still learn something. Most interesting are the social aspects:

- Practically all proponents of 0.999... have accounts and routinely sign their messages.

- To my knowledge, only one of the opponents had an account, and many don't even sign their messages.

- Almost all who have formal mathematical training (including at least one MIT lecturer) agree that equality holds,

- while the opponents make claims like "No mathematician who *knows* what he is talking about will agree with you.", but seem to be at a loss to present just one example of such a "mathematician who *knows* what he is talking about" (there was a link to a constructionist who made up a new system of numbers called "decimal numbers" as opposed to the usual "real numbers"; interesting reading, once more, but he does not state anything about the relation of the real number represented by 0.999... to 1).

Probably it would be better not to feed the trolls, but I rather think that ignoring them would be seen as "capitulation of the PhDs", and I am not exausted yet... ;-) Have fun! --Huon 11:13, 9 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, by now the 0.999...=1 discussion boiled down to divergent views about what 0.999... should be, and the mathematical community's view that it is (and thus equal to 1) seems to have prevailed. Probably I'll have to look at something else in the future. --Huon 12:15, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Word. (I have nothing insightful to add.) Melchoir 03:40, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]