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Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Raoul's Wednesday blog

Today's discussion was in my perspective a little more on the scientific side; therefore, I loved it. We talked about one of the most controversial concepts of mathematics and science. We talked about infinity. In mathematics, we try to cheat infinity by approaching it. On one hand we are never truly reaching infinity on the other we get full round numbers. For example, take 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + 1/64 +1/128 + 1/256 + 1/512 + 1/1024 + .... 1/2^(n), if we keep adding this an infinite number of times we approach the number 1. However, even mathematicians had to draw a wall! They can not add to infinity they have to estimate and calculate. However, a fun fact of mathematics is that there are different types of infinities (but let us not get into that). But I digressed (finally i think i used this properly :)). The idea that the human mind can not fathom to comprehend the idea of infinity is worse than most people think (including our class discussion).

The only thing I had against today's discussion was the possibility of a permanent wall. For example, when things become proven facts (like the world is round), I believe that the wall becomes permanent. This is due to the fact that the wall can not be disproven (broken).

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