# The following was supposedly scribed by
# A. Pagaltzis
# on Monday 28 February 2005 11:24 pm:
>Are you *really* sure you want to do that?
Yes. And don't try to take it away from me. My right to shoot myself
in the foot is as important as my right to bear arms.
>Think about 1/(1/0) == 2/(1/0).
That sounds about right.
>You really don't want to actually operate on infinities.
If you think about it pragmatically, it really does make a lot of sense.
A real-world example where you really do want to operate on infinities
is when you want to compare slopes of lines. If $l[0][1] - $l[1][1] ==
0, you might as well just divide and throw-around an infinity for your
slope comparisons. It works great. One infinity is the same size as
another, so your sorts work out (with -inf at the bottom, etc.)
Maybe infinity is bad (hah! really bad) if you're writing a banking
application, but in geometry it works great. Besides, you can't have
pi without infinity (bad pun #2 left as exercise for the reader.)
--Eric
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