I discovered zero whilst i was thinking about something else that had nothing to do with zero. So what is zero then i hear you all ask. zero is ...bah it cant be something. nothing is something that doesnt happen. It is a name given to the opposite of something. Maybe everything doesnt have an opposit and we're just fools to try and make something from nothing. Bah im confused. What role does negative numbers play in our world and why did i learn them at school?
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Similarly, Roman Numerals were built when we were still learning to count — zero wasn’t even invented yet! Math is a software system that gets better over time, and Roman Numerals were due for an upgrade
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But zero didn’t solve everything; subtraction still had problems. What happens when we take 5 from 3? One solution is to throw up our hands and say “it’s a bug and it’s undefined”, but we’ll do better.
We can think about the problem differently, and entertain the possibility that a number can be “negative” — a number that is less than nothing! (Pretty mind-bending, no?).
There are many interpretations (a lack of cows, a debt of cows) and negatives were invented to handle this “bug” in subtraction. Of course, it took a few thousand years to accept this new feature — negative numbers were still controversial in the 1700s!
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why would you want to take 5 from 3? What purpose does have less than 1 have in our 'need 1 to exist' plane? Soz yes ive just had a smoke but it's just got me thinking. theis thread could equally and even less than, have pictures of women with large pendulous breasts. aye i cant get get it and maye its just not worth worring about. Analogue does not mix with digital and maybe our maths is nothing more than some primevil compulsive disorder. We have no need to count thngs really and eve less need to know what would happen if we had x amount of less than. I suppose its just a pardoxical thing. woooo mindbending etc I quite like paradoxical things mind.
Here's a place worth more of a look later for me
George De Large's Music To Take Drugs To
It just doesnt get any better than this does it? I was gonna turn it into a '2007' thread but there's room for that too no doubt.
Irrationals Make Greeks Angry 
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You: What’s 1/3?
Me: Um, .33 repeating.
You: Ok. What’s 1/3 + 1/3?
Me: 2/3
You: Sure, but do it in decimals.
Me: Um, .33 repeating plus .33 would be… .666 repeating.
You: Great. Now what’s 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3, in decimal?
Me: Uh… .33 repeating plus .33 repeating plus .33 repeating… is .99 repeating.
You: But doesn’t 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 = 1? So .99 repeating = 1.
Me: What manner of trickery is this?
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