Re: [Phys-L] irrationals

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

This reminds me of the first time I ever came up with a
joke that made grown-ups laugh.  Like many jokes, it is
heavily dependent on timing, and doesn't really work on
paper, but here it is anyway:

On 09/12/2017 01:32 PM, I wrote:

> Here's how my father explained it to me when I was six:
>   him: What's 1 and 1/9?
>   me:  1.111111....
>   him: What's 1 and 2/9?
>   me:  1.222222....
>   him: What's 1 and 8/9?
>   me:  1.888888....
>   him: Do you see where this is going?

Shortly after that, my father invited some of his buddies
from work over for dinner.  At some point I was trotted
out to demonstrate that I knew how to work a slide rule.
Somebody asked me to calculate the square root of 4.  I
thought it was ridiculous to use a slide rule for that,
but I didn't say so.  Instead I made big flourish of
rolling up my sleeves, moving the cursor, and squinting
closer and closer as I called out successive digits.  I
enjoyed seeing their reactions of disappointment, then
confusion, then ROTFL as I said:
  It's about one point nine [...] nine [.....] nine [...........]






On 09/12/2017 01:48 PM, Chuck Britton wrote:
> > Some branches of mathematics (note the ’s’) do not allow for the existence of infinities/infinitesimals.

Maybe that's why I emphasized that repeating decimals can
be defined *without* mentioning infinity.