`re' difficulty?

[François Pinard]

"Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> écrit:

> I've been toying for two decades with writing a lengthy but edifying
> treatise revealing the most surprising floating-point numbers I have
> been privileged to know [...]

A was amused, once younger, when someone told me that there are real numbers
that nobody will never speak about.  The reason being simply that there
are more real numbers than there are possible sentences.  (Do not raise
another form of Russell's paradox from within the previous sentence :-).

> [...] but have thus far held back for fear of starving to death.

Have you ever glanced though the (now classic) `On games and numbers' by John
Conway? (the guy behind the `life' game, as you surely know.)  I think the
book sold pretty well.  Who could resist a theory allowing for an infinite
number of distinct zeroes, fuzzy numbers and even wet numbers? :-)

Your turn, Tim!!

P.S. - A detail also much amused me: the book has only two encompassing
chapters, numbered 0 and 1.  Yet, a friend told me that this idea has been
used many times.

-- 
François Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard