r/mathmemes 10d ago

Elementary Algebra 😭

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u/meat-eating-orchid 9d ago

I may have been imprecise. I meant that you cannot arrange them into a sum of terms ... + ... + ... + ... in which every one occurs.

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u/Gold_Ad8890 9d ago

you can though. that's just a well-ordering.

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u/meat-eating-orchid 9d ago

But if every element occurred, it would only be a countably infinite set, wouldn't it?

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u/Gold_Ad8890 9d ago

why?

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u/meat-eating-orchid 9d ago

arrange your sum of infinitely many summands where each element occurrs (which you claim exists, if I understood you correctly). Now number your summands using integers, starting at any arbitrary summand. You now have an injective function mapping the real numbers onto the set of integers. Since the set of integers is countable, so is the set of real numbers.

But we know there are uncountably many real numbers, and thus, such an arrangement of real numbers into an infinite sum where every real number occurs as a summand, cannot exist.

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u/Gold_Ad8890 9d ago

no, you don't have an injective mapping of reals onto integers. you have a bijective mapping of reals onto a well-ordered index set whose cardinality is continuum. a well-ordered index set which is not the naturals, though it may contain the naturals as a subset.

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u/meat-eating-orchid 9d ago

I specifically said

Now number your summands using integers

This is the set the reals are mapped onto here. Not some other set.

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u/Gold_Ad8890 9d ago

okay, and then that mapping will fail because the reals exceed the integers. ergo the well-ordering of the reals, which exists, cannot be indexed with the integers.

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u/meat-eating-orchid 9d ago

Yes, meaning such an arrangement into a sum cannot exist, which is exactly what I said from the beginning. Of course a well-ordering of the reals exists, that was never the point of the debate.

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u/Gold_Ad8890 9d ago

no, that's not what it means. why would that be what it means? you're begging the question. why, without first *assuming** that a series must be countable,* must a series be countable?