From owner-freebsd-chat Sat Jan 27 16:28: 0 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-26-235-186.mmcable.com [65.26.235.186]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id A840137B400 for ; Sat, 27 Jan 2001 16:27:41 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 23243 invoked by uid 100); 28 Jan 2001 00:27:40 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14963.26492.324702.290472@guru.mired.org> Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2001 18:27:40 -0600 (CST) To: Salvo Bartolotta Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: OT again: Re: hexidecimal literacy In-Reply-To: <20010127.23473800@bartequi.ottodomain.org> References: <14963.8033.752142.149320@guru.mired.org> <20010127.20140200@bartequi.ottodomain.org> <14963.13797.116165.382738@guru.mired.org> <20010127.22394200@bartequi.ottodomain.org> <14963.21950.110019.468965@guru.mired.org> <20010127.23473800@bartequi.ottodomain.org> X-Mailer: VM 6.75 under 21.1 (patch 10) "Capitol Reef" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Salvo Bartolotta types: > >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Original Message <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< > > Nope, only 0 is exempt. Unary is usually the first notational systems > > ones learns for representing numbers, and is almost certainly the > > first one discovered by humanity. It's probably used by more people > > than binary. > > I was thinking of a *positional* system of the kind a*(base raised to > 0) + b * (base raised to 1) + ... Right. When base is 1, "(base raised to x)" is unity in all positions, so it becomes the process of adding a series of 1s and 0s. Since the position is on longer informative, you just throw it out - and the zeros go with it. It is rather strange, but such things happen in degenerate cases. On the other hand - those cases are part of the beauty of the system. > Erm, yes. Actually, I have continuous homomorphisms R -> R+ with 0 < > base < 1 in mind. And the contruction of the exponential functions (as > well as the topological theorems involved in it) IS beautiful. :-)) I tend to prefer discrete mathematics myself - I never did like the way continuous systems feel around the edges. Yeah, I know - thats the degenerate case for those systems. Just to do a complete topic change, have you read: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Hamming.html The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics, R.W. Hamming http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, Eugene Wigner http://www.cfcl.com/~jef/effectiveness_mathematics.html Effectiveness of Mathematics, Jef Raskin I just had them pointed out to me, but they contain things that any mathematician - or physicist - should think about. http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message