Someone asked this question on another message board I go to. I’m asking it here because the other message board is mostly about video games and I figured someone here would have a better idea.
But:
It does.
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Q: Why are we talking about this incredibly esoteric topic when there are so many more interesting things to discuss, like whether Rebecca Romijn-Stamos is wearing anything besides blue body paint in the new X-Men movie?
A: Because it’s cool, you wanker. Here, have a banana while the rest of us discuss.
Nonsense. The fraction 1/3 is an ordinary number, and .333 is the same ordinary number; an infinite series of 3s simply happens to be the only way to express said number given the limitations of decimals. Granted, decimals let us express the quantity 1 without difficulty, but the process of infinite repetition produces the same result; .999 is merely another way of saying 1. Likewise, pi is an ordinary number; it’s just a quirk of the real number system that we have to express it as 3.14159 etc (without ever repeating or stopping). Rational numbers, which by definition can be expressed as fractions, translate to repeating or terminating decimals; irrational numbers (like pi) never repeat or terminate in their decimal form.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Slug Signorino.
