Another dumb math question.

[There]

If you were to add 0.1 to 0, then add a tenth of that, a tenth of that, and so on, (0.1111111)

 

So, by doing this, you can add infinitely, but never reach 1?

 

Is there a name for this? Is it called common sense? Or am I just a moron?

[✔ P I X E L A T E D ✔]

infinite regress?

[Christley </3 Peelz]

i dont think it has a name, it has no practical uses so why would it

[AwesomeMcCoolName]

Its a proof of concept from a topic in calc, can't remember which....

[Jymotion]

related - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel's_Horn

 

a 3d cone-like object where the sides never come together at a point, but the object still has a finite volume.

 

imagine it like this: you stand on one side of the room.  you walk halfway to the door.  then halfway again and again and again.  you never reach the door because you only go half the remaining distance each time.

[There]

related - 

 

<a data-ipb="nomediaparse" data-cke-saved-href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel" s_horn"="">imagine it like this: you stand on one side of the room.  you walk halfway to the door.  then halfway again and again and again.  you never reach the door because you only go half the remaining distance each time.

 

Or you divided 1 by 2, and the quotient of that by 2, and so on. You can do that forever, and you will never reach 0. But in another stupid math question thread I made, I was told that 1/infinity is 0. Isn't this sort of the same thing?

[Jymotion]

Or you divided 1 by 2, and the quotient of that by 2, and so on. You can do that forever, and you will never reach 0. But in another stupid math question thread I made, I was told that 1/infinity is 0. Isn't this sort of the same thing?

 

I'm not an expert with math, but I don't believe it works with infinity because infinity is not a number.  infinity is a concept.

infinity just means "unbounded".  you cannot divide by it because it has no end.

 

someone correct me if I'm wrong here, as it has been a while, but I believe you can say this:

1 divided by [a number approaching infinity] equals [a number approaching zero]

or something like that

[AwesomeMcCoolName]

1 divided by [a number approaching infinity] equals [a number approaching zero]

or something like that

The limit of 1/x as x approaches infinity is zero.

[Julia Gillard the Honest]

It's called an infinite series. There are convergent infinite series (series is the plural for a mathematical series), which converge to some number (i.e. the limit of the sum converges to some number as you keep adding terms indefinitely), which is what this one is (with limit 1/9), but there are also divergent infinite series, which simply don't converge.

 

Examples of divergent infinite series:

1. 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ... just keeps growing.
    
2. 1 + (-1) + 1 + (-1) + 1 + (-1) + 1 + ... simply never converges. Many people think that this one does because "1 + (-1) = 0 so it's equal to zero," but without going into the precise mathematical definition of convergence (as we did in the 1/infinity discussion), the problem here is that there are infinitely many 1s and (-1)s, so you could make it "converge" to whatever integer you like with that argument. You could rewrite it as, say, 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + (-1) + 1 + ... to "get" three.