Working with the set of real numbers

Gregory Ewing greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz
Wed Feb 12 17:32:39 EST 2014


Chris Angelico wrote:
> Of course a
> computer can work with _some_ real numbers; but only some. (An awful
> lot of them, of course. A ridiculously huge number of numbers. More
> numbers than you could read in a lifetime! While the number is
> extremely large, it still falls pitifully short of infinity.[1])

The number of integers it can work with is also
vanishingly small compared to the total number
of integers.

However, the number of reals is vastly greater
than the number of integers, so the proportion
of reals it can work with is even *more*
vanishingly small. In some sense.

-- 
Greg



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