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For the last 100 years students have been puzzled by the methods
used to count to infinity. It is not surprising that they were confused
because the method used was both illogical and inconsistent. By
applying one simple rule, the field of counting is restored to a selfconsistent and logical method that can be agreed upon by both
mathematicians and lay people.
In summary all we do is count within a finite set and then extend
that finite set to infinity. This simple change makes a world of
difference to the results achieved so that now we can quantify the
sizes of different infinite number sets with ease.
Contents
The Basic Infinite Set........................................................................................2
Limits and Number Space................................................................................3
Ratios...............................................................................................................4
Rules...........................................................................................................5
Calculation of Values....................................................................................6
Rational Numbers.............................................................................................6
Table of Results............................................................................................9
Infinite Areas..................................................................................................10
Ratio of Areas Above and Below a Sloping Line.............................................11
Ratio of Areas Above and Below a Parabola...................................................13
Further Reading..............................................................................................14
Objections to the Accepted Methods..............................................................14
Appendix 1: Computer Code to Count Rationals............................................15
Appendix 2: Proof of Uniqueness of Rationals................................................16
Version History...............................................................................................17
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S { 1, 2, 3, 4, N }
The last element in this set is N and this represents the current
boundary of what we are going to call the number space. We then
consider what happens as this number space increases without
bound.
The way we are going to use this finite number space is to include it
in the set definition like this
S(N) { 1, 2, 3, 4, (r: r N) }
Which we read as follows: The set S, limited to the finite number
space bounded by N. In other words we allow no values larger than
N in this set. The final element is written as (r: r N) which is read
as having the value r, such that r is less than or equal to the
bounded space value N.
But it would be very tiresome to have to write things like (2r+1:
2r+1 N) or worse still to work it out to (2r+1:
r (N-1)/2) ).
Therefore we are going to leave the finite number limit as a
parameter in the set definition and it is to be understood that the
last term in the series is implicitly limited by this value.
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Ratios
Since is simply an infinitely large number, it has been said that
the number of counting numbers and the number of even counting
numbers is the same, namely infinite. We shall show that this is
unhelpful, illogical, and easily remedied.
Let S(N) { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (2r+1) }
Let SE(N) {
2,
4,
6 (2r) }
In order to compare the sizes of these sets we are allowed to pair
off members (or sub-groups of members) in the sets, but crucially
we are not allowed to exceed the bounds of the number space.1
We can count the elements of an infinite set by comparison with our
basic infinite set. We do this for larger sets by linking groups of
numbers in the target set with one member of the basic set which
we will refer to as a one-to-many pairing. Alternatively, for a smaller
target set we can map several elements from the basic set to one
member in the target set, a many-to-one pairing.
Lets take a concrete example: We take 1 and 2 from the set S and
pair them with 2 from the set SE. Likewise 3 and 4 pair with 4, and
so forth. It is clear that for these two finite sets there are twice as
many elements in S(N) as in SE(N).
count ( S ( N ) )
2
count ( SE ( N ) )
for any N 2
Given that every large value of N gives this same ratio of 2, there is
no particular need to worry about taking N to an infinite limit. The
ratio is always 2. It would be illogical to invent a discontinuity at an
arbitrarily large value of N wherein the ratio suddenly dropped to 1,
and yet that is apparently the current thinking on the subject!
We can now compare this type of infinite set with and say that its
size is /2, or /3 if we uniformly discard 2 out of 3 elements, and
so forth. This forms a natural and intuitive counting methodology.
Suppose instead that we insert elements uniformly within the gaps
between the counting numbers. For example we could insert one
1
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Rules
a b a b
a 2 b a 2
higher powers of
overwhelm lower
powers
a a 2
a
a
b
b
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Calculation of Values
When we get to more complicated sets, where the density of
elements reduces with increasing position in the series, we
immediately run into a problem with the simple one-to-many or
many-to-one pairing schemes.
Consider the finite set of squares of counting numbers
SS(N) { 1, 2, 3, 4 . r }
count( SS(N) )= floor( N ) and so we get the obvious consequence
that
count( SS() ) = 0.5
from which we can generalise the result to give
SK(N) { 1k , 2 k , 3k , 4 k , 5 k , 6 k , r k }
count( SK() ) = k
Rational Numbers
n
Rational numbers are those of the form m
where n and m are
counting numbers. There are of course an infinite number of
rational numbers, but in the context of this work we need to define
just exactly how many that is.
kp
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p
r
q
s
reals
rationals
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Table of Results
We are now in a position to write down a table of values to clarify
the results. Notice that the table is sorted into size-order, with the
smallest sets listed first. (In some cases, however, the exact
ordering is dependant on the parameters chosen.)
set
count()
the cubes of all positive counting numbers
1 / 3
the cubes of all integers
2 1 / 3
the squares of all positive counting numbers
1 / 2
the squares of all integers
2 1 / 2
2 P
the squares of all real numbers with finite precision
/ ln
all prime numbers (from the Prime Number Theorem)
/N
all positive counting numbers that are evenly divisible by
N
/3
all positive counting numbers that are evenly divisible by
3
/2
all even positive counting numbers
/2
all odd positive counting numbers
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This then completes the tools we need to classify the size of any
infinite set as being between limits defined by some multiple of
some power of .
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Infinite Areas
If we can compare infinite counts (a 1-dimensional number space),
we should be able to compare both infinite areas and infinite
volumes by an extension of the same method. We will, however,
y
N
A
N
C
area(A) area(B) N 2 N 2
1
area(C) area(D) N 2 N 2
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y
N
If the line does not pass through the origin we can readily see that if
the scales are increased (N increased by 10 for example) the line
will eventually look as if it does in fact pass through the origin.
Therefore the areas above and below in the limit become 1 again.
More formally we have shown that slope of the line is not relevant
to the areas above and below so we could just consider a line
parallel to the X-Axis with an offset of A. The ratio is then
ratio
N N A A
1
N N A A lim
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We now ask: what is the ratio of areas above and below the red
lines as the number space tends to infinity?
y
N
a
N
ratio
aN 2
a
2
2
4a
4 N aN
for 0 a 1
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2N N
1
2
4N 2N N
2 N 1
Without much effort we have shown that the ratio of areas above
and below the parabola tends to zero as N tends to infinity, even
though the area above the parabola is actually infinite! If the
parabola is not exactly at the origin it is evident from our previous
discussions that the relative offset will become negligible as we
zoom out from the plot and the ratio of areas will remain at zero.
Leslie Green CEng MIEE
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Further Reading
Since the methods presented here are generally in disagreement
with the prior literature, the best you can do with further reading is
to see the Mathematicians viewpoint. There is a vast range of
mathematical literature available which can be accessed using the
search terms below.
Georg Cantor (1845-1918)
injection / surjection / bijection
Aleph-null, Aleph-one
countably infinite, uncountable sets
continuum hypothesis, axiom of choice
cardinality, cardinality of the continuum
Dedekind-infinite set
There is also a term called density for an infinite series, but again,
whilst this has similarities to the methods presented here, it
diverges rapidly giving illogical results such as that the density of
squares and primes is zero. The values we have calculated for these
values are non-zero and very different to each other.
Objections to the Accepted Methods
We hid the primary objections here at the end so as to not
confuse the reader. In the accepted method, two sets are found to
be of the same size by using different number spaces. The sets S
and SE are considered to be the same size because they can be
paired as shown below, pairing vertically adjacent elements.
Let S { 1, 2, 3, 4, r }
Let SE { 2, 4, 6, 8, 2r }
It is this fundamental step which we stated as being logically
inconsistent and intuitively wrong. Everyone knows that there are
twice as many counting numbers as there are even counting
numbers. It takes years to convince mathematics students that
their intuition is wrong, coupled with the fact that they will fail their
exams unless they agree!
It is important to note that all we have done here is to add one rule
to the counting step, namely that we must count within a
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p
r
q
s
p
r
q
s
for p r .
ps qr t
q q1q 2
s s1s2
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Version History
v1.00:
22 Dec 2015 First publication on scribd.
V1.10:
31 Dec 2015 Changed definition of and other sets to
exclude 0.
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