0.999... Is Exactly Equal To 1
...have studied the reception of this equality among students, many of whom initially question or reject this equality. Many are persuaded by textbooks, teachers and arithmetic reasoning as below to accept that the two are equal. However, they are often uneasy enough that they offer further justification. The students' reasoning for denying or affirming the equality is typically based on one of a few common erroneous intuitions about the real numbers; for example that each real number has a unique decimal expansion, that nonzero infinitesimal real numbers should exist, or that the expansion of 0.999⦠eventually terminates. Number systems that bear out some of these intuitions can be constructed, but only outside the standard real number system used in elementary, and most higher, mathematics. Indeed, some settings contain numbers that are "just shy" of 1; these are generally unrelated to 0.999â¦, but they are of considerable interest in mathematical analysis. Introduction Misinterpreting the meaning of the use of the "â¦" (ellipsis) in 0.999⦠accounts for some of the misunderstanding about its equality to 1. The use here is different from the usage in language or in 0.99â¦9, in which the ellipsis specifies that some finite portion is left unstated or otherwise omitted. When used to specify a recurring decimal, "â¦" means that some infinite portion is left unstated, which can only be interpreted as a number by using the mathematical concept of limits). As a result, in conventional mathematical usage, the value assigned to the notation "0.999â¦" is the real number which is the limit of the convergent sequence (0.9, 0.99, 0.999, 0.9999, â¦). Unlike the case with integers and finite decimals, other notations can also express a single number in multiple ways. For example, using fractions), 1â3 = 2â6. Infinite decimals, however, can express the same...
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