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Getting closer to infinity

Name: Anonymous 2007-11-01 7:20

In 1,2,3,... do we get closer to infinity or not?

Name: Anonymous 2007-11-01 7:29

Also, tell me if this is correct, i like to think of numbers as a circle, and infinity the middle.
Even if we travel 100000 times the circle, our distance from infinity is constant

Name: Anonymous 2007-11-01 11:24

Maybe, maybe not.  Depends on the metric you use to define how close you are to infinity.

Name: Anonymous 2007-11-01 13:24

Your question doesn't make sense. Lurk moar.

Name: paste 2007-11-01 13:48

a triangle = 180 degrees
a straight line = 180 degrees
a triangle = a straight line

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Name: Anonymous 2007-11-01 14:42

>>2
Sounds vaguely like the Riemann Sphere coordinate mapping: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_sphere
But you can approach infinity when working on the Riemann Sphere, and it's a 2-manifold in 3-space, rather than your line (plus a point) in 2-space.  You can even construct a legitimate function which gives you the euclidean distance between the mapping of a Complex point and infinity.  Not that this would give us any particularly useful information, but it is a method you could use to quantify "close to infinity."
  Also of interest: "[It] makes expressions such as 1/0=∞ well-behaved and useful."

Name: Anonymous 2007-11-01 14:45

I doubt you do, infinity is not a defined number/point that you can reach making it impossible to reach and to get close to.

Name: Anonymous 2007-11-01 15:31

>>5
Straight line = 180 degrees
Triangle = a three sided polygon whose angle measures, in Euclidean geometry, add up to 180 degrees.

Name: Anonymous 2007-11-01 15:34

damn

Name: Anonymous 2007-11-01 15:34

STFU Dumbass

Name: Anonymous 2007-11-02 0:35

>>6
Dope.  Where do you hear about this stuff?  I can't seem to find anywhere as entertaining to read about this sort of thing as 4chan.

Oh, and I just read a great article on the ask Dr. math forums.  Basically if you define your ordinal numbers as a set, then you have an infinite set, but with an index.  In other words, if I want to go the nth element in the set, it is defined.  So this would be like a well ordered set where each element is equidistant from each other element, which would be kind of like an infinite string of elements.

In contrast in the set 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 I'm continually getting smaller, and each element is continually getting me less close to 0.  This is the other kind of infinity, where it defines a process.

Something like that?

Name: Anonymous 2007-11-03 0:37

If by infinity you mean the concept of an arbitrary large number used when evaluating functions (i.e. behavior of f(x) as x->infinity) then yes every increase, no matter how small, is closer to infinity. However conceptually since infinity is infinitely large you really aren't getting any closer.

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