Are numbers Real #2

[robvalue]

Wow that’s cool. I didn’t know they came about that way (the Romans).

I was thinking what base 1 numbers would look like. I realised that it would just be adding a 1 every time. I’m not sure without checking whether that’s considered a valid system. It’s obviously very stupid, and is the equivalent of putting objects along the floor in a line. Weirdly, the 0 character would only ever appear once at the start.

0
1
11
111
1111
11111

It's called Unary and it is used in primitive accounting. Think marks on a tally stick for counting.

Yes of course, this occurred to me later as well I didn’t realise it had a name, although I think I got an infection there once.

I am fascinated with the importance of extremely weird numbers such as pi and e. They crop up all over the frigging place, sometimes from things you’d never expect.

For example, the infinite sum of inverse squares, if my memory serves me right:

1/1 + 1/4 + 1/9 + ... = (pi^2)/6

Can’t remember what I did five minutes ago, of course. But I remember stuff like this I learnt over 20 years ago.