Damo and Water need Schooling Again on 1/3

Here, I'll make it easy to prove you can cut a cake into three equal parts by thinking outside the box a little.

So, We have a cake, and we cut it out to eight equal slices. You take three of those slices, keep them together, just call it one whole cake, since really it doesn't matter how big the cake is at the start, and the shape doesn't either. After that, you don't even have to measure it out, the slices are already cut for you and ready to be eaten, in three equal parts.
 
Watermark said:
LOL. And that remainder will ALWAYS be 33333. Infinity isn't the problem you make it out to be. Anyone with a basic understanding of higher level math and the infinite series knows that and infinitely repeating decimal poses no problem.

We KNOW what 1/3 is. We KNOW what .33333e is. The fact that it repeats infinitely in decimal form isn't a problem because it repeats infinitely IN A PREDICTABLE FASHION.



It's NOT unresolved. No matter how many times you divide that out it's always going to be .33333e. It's predictable. If it did not, it would not be the value 1/3. This would make a lot more sense to you if you'd ever taken calculus; I did not initially have the mathematical knowledge at first to definitively disprove you, I just knew from common sense that your statement was being counter intuitive. If you looked at and studied the mathematical proofs I'm sure you would come to the same conclusion I have.



We do not PRESUME, we KNOW.



We can divide however much we want, but dividing a repeating decimal like 1/3 is a redundant operation with no practical utility.



No, we multiply by the fractional notation 1/3 to obtain perfect accuracy.



1 can be divided equally into 3 parts. The fact that this produces an infite remainder is irrelevant because the remainder always repeats in a PREDICTABLE FASHION. In decimal notation you need an infinite series to represent this, but to anyone who knows the basics of calculus this is no fucking problem. We deal with infinity all the time in calculus and it has a large amount of practical applications. Something that repeats infinitely with predictable regularity is no problem at all. 1, actually, has notations that repeat infinitely. .9999e is actually just another way to say 1, just as .3333e is just another way to say 1/3.



A fraction is merely another way of representing a number. To claim that it is only valid as a way to express a division problem is ignorance. You do NOT need to reduce something to a decimal value for it to be a number! There are many ways to represent a number, decimal expressions and fractional expressions are just two of the most common ways! I could pull out of my ass right now a way to represent a number. The fact is that something represents a number BECAUSE WE SAY IT DOES. Decimal notation is NOT any more valid than fractional notation!



Sure, 1 can't be divided into 3 without producing a wholly predictable remainder infinite in length, but this is not the grand mathematical problem you are making it out to be. It's a trivial and boring problem that was done away with by 17th century mathematicians, if not before then.
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LOL. This sounds so much like one of my posts in the original thread on the other board that I can't help but laugh. Soon you will be talking about the value "infinity" is used in equations in higher level maths all the time and stuff....
 
DigitalDave said:
Here, I'll make it easy to prove you can cut a cake into three equal parts by thinking outside the box a little.

So, We have a cake, and we cut it out to eight equal slices. You take three of those slices, keep them together, just call it one whole cake, since really it doesn't matter how big the cake is at the start, and the shape doesn't either. After that, you don't even have to measure it out, the slices are already cut for you and ready to be eaten, in three equal parts.
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Even easier, one candy bar three inches long, cut equally into one inch pieces. According to theory this could not be expressed mathematically because they are pieces that are 1/3 each of the original candy bar.
 
Threedee said:
Dixie, shut up, you fucking retard. You are an ignorant peasant.
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NO NO NO... he is da smartest person in the whole wide world. No matter what idiocy he spews forth, he is correct. He therefore is not required to back up his assertions. He simply needs to speak and the rest of us must accept his words as fact.

He is a Christian AND an atheist

Agnostics simply are afraid to take a side

95% of humans are spiritual... though don't ask him to provide evidence of his stat

Atheists really believe in GOD, they just really really hate him/it/her

1/3

Spirituality has been around since man was first created (probably about 6000 years ago)
 
Socrtease said:
This represents Damo and Water------>:1up:<------This is Dixie.

Thus endeth the lesson.
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No... unfortunately the lesson doesn't end unless the pupil is actually capable of learning. Its like he has a concussion and has to have everything repeated to him over and over again because he keeps forgetting what occurred. Why else would anyone put themselves through this time and again?
 
Damocles said:
LOL. This sounds so much like one of my posts in the original thread on the other board that I can't help but laugh. Soon you will be talking about the value "infinity" is used in equations in higher level maths all the time and stuff....
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Jesus, and I thought I was bringing something new into the equation! I guess I just didn't understand what you were talking about when I first got on the board. I even accepted some of his points, like the "you can't divide three perfectly in decimal notation because it goes on forever" that some people on this board are giving him.

But after a few years of calculus I know that none of his points are valid at all.
 
Yurt said:
lol

i don't trust dixie....he claims to not have said or claimed something and when you show him he said it....he runs away
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He's definitely lying. He did not even understand where the missing dollar went and claimed the riddle that started the thread could not be solved.

Besides that, he is still wrong. The fact that the decimal system does not represent it in an "even" amount is totally irrelevant. But Dixie argues we can't use math that is unresolved.
 
We have used equations that involved infinity, but mostly the point was just to eliminate infinity, write infinity, or write zero.

Of course, anything you do with a limit or a derivative actually involves infinity, but they brush over that because they don't want to many minds to explode.
 
RStringfield said:
He's definitely lying. He did not even understand where the missing dollar went and claimed the riddle that started the thread could not be solved.

Besides that, he is still wrong. The fact that the decimal system does not represent it in an "even" amount is totally irrelevant. But Dixie argues we can't use math that is unresolved.
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But the decimal system DOES represent in an even amount! Saying "this value is 0.333 and that three goes on forever" is just as good as saying 1/3. The only way it could NOT be 1/3 is if you arbitrarily stopped the procession in your mind (something Dixie does in his "you can divide it out to the 100,000 place..." argument). If you arbitrarily stopped it in your head though, your committing mathematical error. Just assume it goes on forever. Decimal notation of 0.3333e is inconvenient but perfectly valid. It does not change the value of 1/3 to represent it in decimals.
 
A fraction is merely another way of representing a number. To claim that it is only valid as a way to express a division problem is ignorance. You do NOT need to reduce something to a decimal value for it to be a number! There are many ways to represent a number, decimal expressions and fractional expressions are just two of the most common ways! I could pull out of my ass right now a way to represent a number. The fact is that something represents a number BECAUSE WE SAY IT DOES. Decimal notation is NOT any more valid than fractional notation!
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That, in my opinion, is his major block. He thinks the decimal representation of numbers are somehow a more valid reflection of reality than any other method of representation. They are not.

We don't even need fractions or infinite repetition to represent the equal divisions of 1 by 3. We can just use a different base system.
 
Watermark said:
But the decimal system DOES represent in an even amount! Saying "this value is 0.333 and that three goes on forever" is just as good as saying 1/3. The only way it could NOT be 1/3 is if you arbitrarily stopped the procession in your mind (something Dixie does in his "you can divide it out to the 100,000 place..." argument). If you arbitrarily stopped it in your head though, your committing mathematical error. Just assume it goes on forever. Decimal notation of 0.3333e is inconvenient but perfectly valid. It does not change the value of 1/3 to represent it in decimals.
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thats becuase human thinking and therefore human math are not infinite....
 
I wonder.... is Ditzie done 'schooling' Damo and Water now?

Or is he thoroughly embarrassed and thus never to be seen or heard from again?
 
Superfreak said:
I wonder.... is Ditzie done 'schooling' Damo and Water now?

Or is he thoroughly embarrassed and thus never to be seen or heard from again?
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Yeah, I noticed that both Dixie and SM disappeared after being shown how completely wrong they are. SM completely stopped posting about rights violations after his great comment about a 1983 law and Dixie disappears after WM gives him a math lesson.
 
I have got to say, this is the most intriguing phenomenon I think I have ever seen. A record-setting number of threads and posts on this simple little subject. You would think, a simple little mathematical problem would be something everyone (with intelligence) could agree on, after all, math is not subject to our opinions at all. Math is math, it doesn't change depending on our viewpoint or politics, but for some odd reason, this particular problem is generating enormous controversy.

It is important to remember the things I have NOT said here. Yes, we can "represent" numbers in all sorts of ways, not all of them have numeric value. For instance, I can say X=1... but X is not a numeric value, it is a letter. X only represents the value I assigned. Several times in this thread, people have hit on the truth, that fractions are not numbers, they are "representations" of a value. 1/3 is a way of expressing 1 of 3 parts of a whole. I have never said that things can't be divided by 3, or that we can't assume equal thirds, we do so all the time. I have never said something as silly as 1/3 doesn't exist, or I don't believe in 1/3, but time and time again, some pinhead will throw this up in my face on the board, as if I have said that.

The point keeps being made about other base number systems, for instance, in base 12, 1/3 can be divided evenly, but are the values of '1' and '3' in base 12, the same as base 10? Things don't alter themselves because we use a base 12 system, do they? So we can assume the value of 1 in base 10, is actually 1.2 in base 12. Now, 1.2 can be divided evenly by 3. I have not claimed otherwise. My only point has been about base 10 and the values of 1 and 3. No need to complicate that, my point doesn't need complication. When you divide 1 by 3, you end up with a remainder. Again, this is math, not an opinion which can be agreed with or disagreed with. Either 1 divided by 3 produces a remainder or it doesn't, there is no middle ground, there is no gray area. If it doesn't divide evenly, and does produce a remainder, we can conclude that an even division is not possible. That is the only point I have ever made, and it's about the simplest point you can make in math, other than 1+1! Now, if I had claimed that 1+1 didn't produce an even number, perhaps I could understand 5,000 posts to "correct" me, but that isn't what was said at all.
 
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