>> Oh, I see. I thought it was going to say something more insightful 
>> than that. (How the hell do you compute a limit or an integral anyway?)
> 
> Ahh, no nothing more insightful, just that it did address the major 
> points you were worrying about.
> 
> Also, I'll assume you mean "how do you numerically compute a limit or 
> integral?":
> 
> If it's a limit, just compute it for numbers as close as possible to the 
> limiting value (or really really big numbers if the limiting value is 
> infinite).  The closer (or the bigger) the number you compute it for the 
> closer your answer will be.

Wouldn't that be increadibly unstable, numerically?

> If it's an integral do something like this: 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_sum

I see. (Although I'm still not sure how you compute an infinite integral 
this way...)

>> But you can't compute an infinite product.
> 
> If the product converges (which it does, otherwise you couldn't define a 
> number/function with it) then you can by definition get an arbitrarily 
> good approximation by computing the product of the first n terms for a 
> large enough n.

I don't see how that is the case.

If you have an infinite *sum*, then as long as the terms get 
progressively more tiny and never get larger again, you can disregard 
all the terms after a certain point. But if you're taking a *product* 
then any term, anywhere in the series could radically alter the final 
result.

> Out of curiosity have you ever had a calculus class?

I've never had *any* maths class!

(Unless you count what we did at school. This simply involved filling 
out hundreds of thousands of pages of long-division problems over a 
7-year period...)

Hypothetically I shouldn't be able to do algebra at all...

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