Friday, 25 October 2013

mathematics - The clearly wrong proof


Bob claims to have a proof that 0.˙1=1.
That's 0.¯1=1, 0.(1)=1 or 0.11111...=1 in other common formats.
The proof starts If 1x=0.˙1,then 10x=1.˙110x1x=1.˙10.˙11x=1substituting in the value of 1x for 0.˙1 (as defined at the start)0.˙1=1


He is not wrong (Ignore the title). Everything is correct. Every number in this question is in base 10.


How is this possible?



Answer





"There are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't."

Bob is doing his calculations in base 2 (aka. binary): 0.111...2=12 similarly to the the following in base 10: 0.999...10=110 The apparently wrong part is correct when the calculation is done in base 2: 10212=12 The last sentence states that every number is in base 10, which interpreted correctly (as a binary number again) means that every number is in base 102=210



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