This page contains a rant that I wrote to see if I could write like a mathematics crank. It appeared as a usenet article in September of 1998. It turns out that the someone already invented the numbering system I propose below. Robert Forslund wrote an article about it that appeared in a referreed journal. He calls the system below the "Alternate Numbering System". He uses A where I proposed using # (mockingly referring to it as "futplex", rather than one of #'s other names).
Forslund has thought a lot about zero and the way we write down positive integers.
One interesting mathematical use of this Alternate Numbering System involves numbering strings in a particular alphabet. Suppose that our alphabet is {a, b, c, ..., z} (lower case English letters). All strings in the alphabet, including the empty string, can be uniquely enumerated by letting zero be the number of the empty string, and counting everying else in a base-26 variant of the system proposed below. This implies that the set of all strings over a given alphabet is countable, and if the length of the strings isn't constrained, the set of all strings over that alphabet is countably infinite.
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I will hereby prove that all of Modern Mathematics is based on a FALSE foundation: ZERO.
Q: Since ZERO is NOTHING, how can we have a SYMBOL to represent it?
A: We can't. NOTHING is NOTHING, the
symbol we call zero ('0') is a FALSEHOOD!
Q: But HOW can we represent numbers without a ZERO!?!?
A: Like this! I'll use 'I' to represent a unit, which is the
SMALLEST possible quantity. I'll use 'D' to represent
ten units.
| COUNT | UNITS |
|---|---|
| 1 | I |
| 2 | II |
| 3 | III |
| 4 | IIII |
| 5 | IIIII |
| 6 | IIIIII |
| 7 | IIIIIII |
| 8 | IIIIIIII |
| 9 | IIIIIIIIII |
| #* | D |
| 11 | DI |
| 12 | DII |
| 13 | DIII |
| 14 | DIIII |
| 15 | DIIIII |
| 16 | DIIIIII |
| 17 | DIIIIIII |
| 18 | DIIIIIIII |
| 19 | DIIIIIIIII |
| 1#* | DD |
| 21 | DDI |
You get the picture. No symbol for NOTHING need exist, and in fact CAN exist. It stands to reason that you can't SYMBOLIZE NOTHING. With the introduction of '#'*, we can quit using zero for NOTHING or for anything. Now, a way exists to represent EVERY number without a symbol for NO NUMBER.
QED, Mathematics must be rebuilt upon this Firm, LOGICAL foundation.
* - Suggested pronunciation for the '#' sign: "futplex".
Example: "We humans all have futplex toes," Tom said tensely.
Example: "The act of killing one of every futplex prisoners is called
'decimating'," Tom concluded.
$Id: crank.rant.html,v 1.5 1999/06/07 04:17:34 bediger Exp bediger $
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