off topic but please forgive me me and answer

[superpollo]

Steve Holden ha scritto:
> superpollo wrote:
>> Patrick Maupin ha scritto:
>>> On Apr 2, 2:41 pm, Andreas Waldenburger <use... at geekmail.INVALID>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> While everyone else is mocking you: Can you please elaborate on why you
>>>> want to know and what kind of problem you're trying to solve with this?
>>>> Also, don't you think you should have picked a maths forum for this
>>>> kind of question?
>>> Methinks the OP is fluent in the way of choosing newsgroups.
>>> According to google, he has posted 6855 messages in 213 groups.
>>>
>>> http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?enc_user=ul3SQhIAAAAYmLD0Oj5Yxp-liP3Vw9uApbyajUBv9M9XLUB2gqkZmQ
>>>
>>>
>>> And I can't speak for anybody else, but I just assumed it was an April
>>> Fool's question.  I meant to be laughing with the OP, not at him, so
>>> sorry if I misunderstood.
>> no no you understood prfectly *but* the thing is i am a regular in an
>> italian language math ng which is haunted by a crackpot who insists that
>> 1/2 * 1/2 cannot be 1/4, "because multiplication means getting bigger",
>> so i took a semi-serious stance and made a few posts as a statistical
>> tentative to "convince" said crackpot that the world is not going crazy
>> (but maybe he is)
>>
>> thanks
>>
>> ps: note that my nickname is not unique, and there are a few people
>> whith the same one... and i didn't ever post using googlegroups
> 
> If you think you will persuade a crackpot to drop his lunacy by logical
> argument you are clearly an optimist of the first water. But since I
> like a challenge (and bearing in mind this is OT so I don't claim to be
> an expert) you might try first of all persuading him to agree to the
> commutativity of multiplication (i.e. x * y == y * x for any x and y).
> 
> If he agrees to that, then get him to agree that x * 1 == x for any x.
> 
> If he agrees to that

he does not, since "you cannot multiply something, and not getting some 
more of it" ... he is stuck with the latin etimology of "multiply" 
("multiplicare" means "increase quantity", like in the fish and bread 
miracle)