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To: edsheppa
Oh my. The state of US education is even worse than I thought. I hope you don't work in a technical field.

Argue with the high school teacher.

Closed Set of Elements

The integers are closed under multiplication (if you multiply two integers, you get another integer), but they are _not_ closed under division, since you can divide two integers to get a rational number that isn't an integer.

The rationals, however, are closed under addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

1,553 posted on 05/28/2005 10:24:42 AM PDT by AndrewC
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To: AndrewC

Maybe the tilt came when you looped your summation to infinity. I don't know. Maybe the Mathematician can tell us.


1,559 posted on 05/28/2005 10:32:05 AM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (No wonder the Southern Baptist Church threw Greer out: Only one god per church! [Ann Coulter])
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To: AndrewC

So you don't know what that little "sideways eight" atop the sigma symbol means? Sad.


1,570 posted on 05/28/2005 10:58:36 AM PDT by edsheppa
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To: AndrewC

Your equation included more operations than just addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, under which the set of rationals is indeed closed. It included the operation of infinite summation under which the set of rationals is most definitely NOT closed. Any infinite, nonrepeating decimal is an example of an infinite summation of rationals that yields an irrational result, for example.


2,174 posted on 06/01/2005 12:13:10 PM PDT by stremba
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