• wellbuddyweek@lemm.ee
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    13 days ago

    Actually, those are not the same. Natural numbers include zero, positive integers do not. She shoud definately use ‘big naturals’.

    Edit: although you could argue that it doesnt matter as 0 is arguably neither big nor large

    • yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de
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      13 days ago

      Natural numbers only include zero if you define it so in the beginning of your book/paper/whatever. Otherwise it’s ambiguous and you should be ashamed of yourself.

      • wellbuddyweek@lemm.ee
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        13 days ago

        Fair enough, as a computer scientist I got tought to use the Neumann definition, which includes zero, unless stated differently by the author. But for general mathematics, I guess it’s used both ways.

    • errer@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      Big naturals in fact include two zeroes:

      (o ) ( o)

      Spaces and parens added for clarity

    • Log in | Sign up@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      Natural numbers include zero

      Only if you’re French or a computer scientist or something! No one else counts from zero.

      There’s nothing natural about zero. The famously organized and inventive Roman Empire did fine without it and it wasn’t a popular concept in Europe until the early thirteenth century.

      If zero were natural like 1, 2, 3, 4, then all cultures would have counted from zero, but they absolutely did not.

          • SchwertImStein@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            12 days ago

            I think about this in terms can I have of something (indivisible), and sure enough I can have 0 apples (yeah, yeah, divisible), bruises, grains of sand in my pocket

            • Log in | Sign up@lemmy.world
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              11 days ago

              I think you’re trying to explain to me what zero means while I’m trying to explain that it’s not where numbers numbers start of from. It’s where array offsets start (but making humans make that distinction instead of compilers is on obvious own goal for language designers who weren’t intending to make off by one errors more frequent). It’s where set theory starts, but it’s absolutely not where counting starts, and number starts with counting. It’s not a natural number.

      • Owl@mander.xyz
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        13 days ago

        In mathematics, the natural numbers are the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, and so on, possibly excluding 0.[1] Some start counting with 0, defining the natural numbers as the non-negative integers 0, 1, 2, 3, …, while others start with 1, defining them as the positive integers 1, 2, 3, … .[a] Some authors acknowledge both definitions whenever convenient.[2] Sometimes, the whole numbers are the natural numbers as well as zero. In other cases, the whole numbers refer to all of the integers, including negative integers.[3] The counting numbers are another term for the natural numbers, particularly in primary education, and are ambiguous as well although typically start at 1.

        Sauce

        So it is undefined behavior, great

        • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
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          13 days ago

          Yes. Some mathematicians think that 0 is natural, others don’t. So “natural number” is ambiguous.

          In order to avoid ambiguity, instead of using fancy “N”, you should use fancy “N0” to refer to {0,1,2,3,4,…} and “positive integers” to refer to {1,2,3,4,…}.

      • Jankatarch@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        I mean all numbers are made up when you think about it.

        Also unrelated but natural numbers are closed under multiplication (by pure coincidence) while imaginary numbers are not.

        This means natural numbers make worse examples when learning about sets.

      • ewenak@jlai.lu
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        13 days ago

        Why a subset? They’re the same thing right? I guess it could be about the zero?

          • ewenak@jlai.lu
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            13 days ago

            Well what I learned in school was that zero was both positive and negative. I knew some people consider the natural numbers don’t include zero, but I didn’t know for some zero isn’t even positive.

            • deltapi@lemmy.world
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              13 days ago

              I knew a physicist who considered 0 negative if she arrived at 0 coming from negative source numbers and positive if coming from positive sources.

              Something something sampling rate

            • MBM@lemmings.world
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              13 days ago

              Some places (like France) talk about positive and strictly positive, others (like England) about non-negative and positive

          • ewenak@jlai.lu
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            12 days ago

            True

            But I don’t think they would have said “a subset of” if the sets were identical.