Currently, the are zero polar bears on my property. I visually confirmed that a minute ago and remain confident in its truth. Feel free to contend otherwise. I get it.
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Current time: December 26, 2024, 12:01 pm
| Poll: Is zero a natural number? This poll is closed. |
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| Yes | 3 | 30.00% | |
| No | 7 | 70.00% | |
| Total | 10 vote(s) | 100% | |
| * You voted for this item. | [Show Results] |
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Is zero a natural number?
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 (January 18, 2022 at 8:04 am)Jehanne Wrote:(January 18, 2022 at 7:59 am)zebo-the-fat Wrote: Does zero occur in nature... yes (I have zero trees outside my house) .... so zero is natural The Greeks didn't know zero, and they didn't even consider 1 to be a number, since it didn't act like any of the other numbers. Multiply any number by 1 and you get the same number back. The numbers didn't start acting like numbers until 2.  (January 18, 2022 at 8:04 am)Jehanne Wrote:(January 18, 2022 at 7:59 am)zebo-the-fat Wrote: Does zero occur in nature... yes (I have zero trees outside my house) .... so zero is natural They got along fine without algebra as well. Math does not occur in nature. Math is made up to make sense of nature. Things lived perfectly well as far as they know for 4 billion years without any hint of effort to make sense of nature.  (November 5, 2022 at 6:42 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote:(January 18, 2022 at 8:04 am)Jehanne Wrote: Yes, it does occur in nature, but, the Romans got along just fine without any numerical representation of it. I think that most electrical engineers and electricians would disagree with you, say, with respect to phenomenon such as alternating current.
they can pretend math is actually there as oppose to accurately model what is there. but it is still not there.
(November 5, 2022 at 9:06 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: they can pretend math is actually there as oppose to accurately model what is there. but it is still not there. The distribution of primes among the integers, like the Mandelbrot Set, has a specific pattern that exists whether we discover it or aliens in another galaxy do. This leads Platonists to suppose such abstract structures are just "there", like a mountain. (November 5, 2022 at 9:06 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: they can pretend math is actually there as oppose to accurately model what is there. but it is still not there. I agree that there is not some Platonic realm where the square root of 2 is hanging out kitty-corner to where all the transcendental numbers are. Such was never my point. Zero does not have any positive or negative value so zero cannot be a natural number. But it sure is a whole number
 (November 9, 2022 at 6:29 am)itsmeavi_ Wrote: 0 is greater than or equal to 0. it is also less than or equal to 0. Whether 0 is included as a natural number is simply a matter of convention and convenience. In computer science, it is often useful to have an offset of 0 and so many situations begin counting at 0. In set theory, it is convenient to define 0 as the empty set and natural numbers in terms of transitive sets. So the standard definition has 0 as a natural number. The axioms of Peano arithmetic are slightly different depending on whether you want to have 0 or 1 be the smallest natural number. Most algebraic systems (rings, fields, semi-rings, abelian groups, commutative monoids) have an additive identity element and it is convenient to have such. So 0 tends to be in most systems. The natural numbers, if they include 0 are a very important example of a semi-ring. Without 0, they are not. So, it is usually convenient to include 0 as a natural number. |
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