off topic but please forgive me me and answer

[Matthew Barnett]

superpollo wrote:
> 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)
> 
Do he also think that division always makes it smaller? What about
division by a half?