Math question

[Spaniard]

dunno if it has been said, but the heads side of a coin weighs a tiny, tiny, tiny, bit more.
therefor it will land on tails more, maybe once more out of 1000~
im just saying this for quarters, it might be different for other coins.

Thanks for the information, however we're discussing statistics, so the coin itself doesn't matter. Let's supose we're using a coin that has a 0,5-0,5 chance.

 

[Cathy]

Oh, and about 1/x, hell I knew I was missing something. I study Industrial Egineering and this is such a common case that I forgot to explain it properly. What convergence/divergence means is: If you take the 1/x function and add all the possible natural values for the function, does it aproach a certain number? This is 1/1 + 1/2 + 1/3+ ... You can check that 1/x aproaches no number, while 1/x^2 does (1/1 + 1/4 + 1/9 + ...). Anyway let's leave this apart, since it has nothing to do with the thread.

About the other two quotes, I don't know, we say that the result of 1^infinity is indeterminate (it is a different result depending on the function, not that it doesn't have an answer). And about infinite, is it a number? I don't think so. Which is the natural number that goes right before infinite? I can answer this for every number but infinity (because it's an idea, not a number).

1/x approaches a value as x->infinity. If you want to talk about the limit of the partial sums of 1/1 + 1/2 + ..., you have to say that, since it is something totally different.

And yes, we say that forms such as infinity ^ infinity are indeterminate. However, you would never write, for example, infinity ^ infinity = indetermine because nothing is equal (and this is what you wrote).

With regard to infinity and my comment, perhaps you should familarise yourself with the extended real number system.

And I did answer your question, so the main purpose of this topic has already been solved.

 

[Spaniard]

Ok, excuse me for not being absolutely stric about the way I wrote the mathematics stuff.

And about your answer, yeah, you solved my question. After all we agree in the answer and we both were right. So there's no point in discussing.

Thank you all.

 

[Aeolus]

Colin, Obi, and Hipmonlee were the only sensible people in this thread.

Future reference for other users:

Please do not post in "technical" Congregation threads if you aren't knowledgeable on a subject and have nothing material to contribute to the topic. It would be like me posting a treatise on computer programming... simply nonsense. Thanks.