"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
news:3d0bb059@news.povray.org...
> Jonathan Wooldridge <jwo### [at] attbicom> wrote:
> > Just because our digital mathematics aren't up to the task doesn't mean
the
> > result doesn't exist. The result of dividing 1 by 0 should be infinity.
>
>   Infinity does not belong to the set of real numbers, which is the set
> which is used in practice.
>
>   Besides, the problem with vnormalize(<0,0,0>) is that it would make
> <0/0, 0/0, 0/0> and 0/0 is truely undefined (it's not infinity even if
> we include infinity in our numerical system).
>
>   There's no point in adding support for infinity because infinity is not
> usable for anything (every operation which you can make with infinity
results
> in infinity, -infinity or undefined, none of which are usable in
practice).
>
That depends on what you use infinity for, doesn't it?
If x turns out to be +infinity, then we have a direction instead of a point.
And if milesPerHour turns out to be +infinity, doesn't it add a new
dimension? Acceleration perhaps?

It seems like a hard concept to get the mind around: That point at which a
measurement becomes a different kind of measurement.

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