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The least interesting number (plover.com)
5 points by hhm on Feb 13, 2008 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments



From the article: "nearly all real numbers are transcendental."

I'll put forward the facetious argument that only half of the real numbers are transcendental. Between every pair of non-equal rationals exists a transcendental. Between every pair of non-equal transcendentals exists a rational. Therefore, only half of the real numbers are transcendental.


s/facetious/fallacious :-)

Of course, what the author meant is that the set of non-transcendental numbers has measure zero. This implies, among other things, that a number chosen randomly from, say, [0,1] is transcendental with probability 1.




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