This is certainly not the first time that this list has expressed
reservations about scientific notation. In topics that suffer from
insight-blindness - a deficit which is much like spelling blindness for
particular words - and who does not suffer from this one? I find that a
touchstone is helpful. For Scientific notation for example, my
touchstone is this equation:
[AnyNumber]^0 = 1
For me, it is not difficult to spring from 10^0 = 1 to this: 10^-1 = 1/10
From this spring board, you will probably agree that 1.0 X 10^-1 = 1.0
X 1/10
Brian W
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Where AnyNumber != 0. There was a recent argument bouncing here and
there through the MathGroup mailing list about this. It brought out a
lot of different views, based on historical arguments, arguments from
authority, heuristic arguments, ones based on limits in the real
domain, ones based on limits in the complex domain, ones based on
Cantor set theory, and lots of others. It seemed to me that the safest
answer was "undefined".
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Down with categorical imperative!
flutzpah@yahoo.com
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