• barsquid@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    “Nearly all real numbers are normal (basically no real numbers are not normal), but we’re only aware of a few. This one literally non-computable one for sure. Maybe sqrt(2).”

    Gotta love it.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      3 months ago

      We’re so used to dealing with real numbers it’s easy to forget they’re terrible. These puppies are a particularly egregious example I like to point to - functions that preserve addition but literally black out the entire x-y plane when plotted. On rational numbers all additive functions are automatically linear, of the form mx+n. There’s no nice in-between on the reals, either; it’s the “curve” from hell or a line.

      Hot take, but I really hope physics will turn out to work without them.