4 hundred quadrillonth?

Erik Max Francis max at alcyone.com
Mon May 25 02:23:30 EDT 2009


Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
> On Mon, 25 May 2009 16:21:19 +1200, Lawrence D'Oliveiro
> <ldo at geek-central.gen.new_zealand> declaimed the following in
> gmane.comp.python.general:
> 
>> Interesting kind of mindset, that assumes that the opposite of "real" must 
>> be "integer" or a subset thereof...
> 
> 	No, but since PI (and e) are both transcendentals, there is NO
> representation (except by the symbols themselves) which is NOT an
> approximation.

Sure there are; you can just use other symbolic representations.  In 
fact, there are trivially an infinite number of them; e, e^1, 1/(1/e), e 
+ 1 - 1, e + 2 - 2, etc.

Even if you restrict yourself to base-b expansions (for which the 
statement is true for integer bases), you can cheat there too:  e is 1 
in base e.

-- 
Erik Max Francis && max at alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
  San Jose, CA, USA && 37 18 N 121 57 W && AIM, Y!M, Skype erikmaxfrancis
   Men and women, women and men. It will never work.
    -- Erica Jong



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