POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : Weekly calibration : Re: Weekly calibration Server Time
6 Sep 2024 07:15:38 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Weekly calibration  
From: Darren New
Date: 21 Apr 2009 17:53:27
Message: <49ee4057$1@news.povray.org>
Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> You can't get a forever continuous string of heads from a coin because
>> as far as we know, there's no such thing as forever. :-) Fair nuff.
> 
> 	Well, maybe there _is_. I just know of no way of *testing* it.<G>

I know you're being funny, but even if there is a "forever", such is 
unbounded, not infinite, so it still doesn't help.

It would be better to say "an infinite number of monkeys", because then you 
don't have the confusion between unbounded and infinite.

Remember that "the limit as N approaches infinity" was originally designed 
to calculate what happens *at* infinity, while avoiding the paradoxes.

It seems kind of silly to say "An infinite number of monkeys will hit upon 
Shakespeare" and answer that with "no they won't, because there's no such 
thing as an infinite number of monkeys."  That's like me saying "If I was in 
the WTC on the morning of 9/11/01, I'd be dead", and you answering "No you 
wouldn't, because you were on the other side of the country that day."

I don't think anyone's arguing that there actually are or even could be an 
infinite number of monkeys. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!


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