> At 10:50 AM 2/9/00 -0500, Jeff Woods wrote:
> >You're bumping up against the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus here. Pi
> >DOES have a precisely defined value, but you cannot express it in decimal
> >form. You can express it as an infinite expansion, however.
>
> Infinite to me means never ending. A precisely defined value to me is a
> finite value.
> A never ending value is not finite.
Ah, OK. Enlightenment dawns.
You're using the words in a way which is completely different from the
mainstream mathematical usage. While you're entirely free to do so, please
don't be surprised if people misunderstand you.
The conventional meaning of "infinite", at least in mathematical usage, is
something like "greater than any specified quantity, no matter how large".
A quantity such as e (2.718281828459045...), pi (3.14159265358979...) or 1/7
(0.142857142857...) may each require an infinite number of digits to
represent their values *exactly* in the decimal representation, but they are
most assuredly not infinite themselves. To see this, note that not one of
them is greater than 4.
Paul
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