In article <1180681185.812415.185030@q19g2000prn.googlegroups.com>, <chajadan@mail.com> wrote:
>Jesse I'm glad you brought this up. It is imperative people understand >I am using 0.999... to be literally the series.
If you have a different definition of 0.999... frmo the usual one, it's not surprising that you get different answers.
>People are taught that >0.999... is equal to 1 years before they are ever taught about limits.
Actually, I don't remember the subject coming up at all. I remember being told that 0.333... is the decimal representation of 1/3, though.
>I am saying that the full sum of the series would never equal 1, it is >less
The sum of any finite part of the sequence is not 1. But 0.999... doesn't represent any finite part of it.
>We try to teach students in >early math that the series itself ~equals~ one
We do? Series don't equal numbers!
>It is only this equality I refute, not the limit.
If students are told that 0.999... = 1 without being told about limits, then that just means that something is being missed out. It doesn't having any bearing on the truth of the equality.
-- Richard -- "Consideration shall be given to the need for as many as 32 characters in some alphabets" - X3.4, 1963.
