Question about natural numbers.

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the nature of natural numbers and their representation in terms of digits. Participants explore the implications of having an infinite number of digits and the countability of natural numbers, addressing both theoretical and conceptual aspects.

Discussion Character

  • Conceptual clarification
  • Debate/contested
  • Mathematical reasoning

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants assert that every natural number has a finite number of digits.
  • Others argue that the set of infinite digit strings is uncountable, which raises questions about the nature of natural numbers.
  • One participant expresses confusion about the implications of natural numbers being unbounded while having a finite number of digits.
  • It is noted that as natural numbers increase, the number of digits also increases, with a function proposed to illustrate this relationship.
  • Another participant suggests that if natural numbers had an infinite number of digits, it would lead to a contradiction regarding the countability of natural numbers.
  • Some participants discuss the possibility of using proof by contradiction to verify claims about the digit representation of natural numbers, but others challenge this approach.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants generally agree that every individual natural number has a finite number of digits. However, there is disagreement regarding the implications of this fact, particularly in relation to the countability of natural numbers and the concept of infinite digit strings.

Contextual Notes

Participants highlight the complexity of defining the relationship between natural numbers and their digit representations, noting that many proposed strings may not correspond to natural numbers due to divergence issues.

cragar
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Are there an [itex]\aleph_0[/itex] # of natural numbers with an
[itex]\aleph_0[/itex] # of digits?
 
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Every natural number has a finite number of digits.
 
Adding to the above (which is correct), the set of infinite digit strings is uncountable.
 
ok I understand what you guys are saying but it still seems strange to me.
I feel like that is saying the natural numbers are not bounded but they have a finite number of digits. I mean you couldn't put a bound on the number of digits.
 
cragar said:
ok I understand what you guys are saying but it still seems strange to me.
I feel like that is saying the natural numbers are not bounded but they have a finite number of digits. I mean you couldn't put a bound on the number of digits.

Each individual natural number has a finite number of digits.
The entire set is unbounded.
 
I mean you couldn't put a bound on the number of digits.

You can't. This doesn't change the fact that every natural number has a finite number of digits.
 
For any natural number you pick, I can pick one with more digits. For example, if you picked x I could pick 10x, or 100,000,000,000,000,000x.

However all three of those numbers have a finite number of digits.

As the natural numbers get larger and larger so do the number of digits.

Say you have f(x) = # of digits x has for all natural numbers.

Then it is certainly true that as x approaches infinity, so does f(x).
 
To make the above a bit more rigorous, the number of digits in a natural number [itex]n[/itex] is given by [itex]\lfloor \log_{10}(n) \rfloor[/itex] and this obviously goes to infinity.
 
I could see the problem with saying that there are natural numbers with an
[itex]\aleph_0[/itex] of digits because then I would have 10 choices for each number in the slot and I would have [itex]10^{\aleph_0}[/itex] numbers which would be uncountable and a contradiction because the set of naturals is countable. Could I use this as a proof by contradiction to verify it?
 
  • #10
cragar said:
Could I use this as a proof by contradiction to verify it?

No. The contradiction does not verify that every natural number has a base 10 representation with only finitely many digits.
 
  • #11
cragar said:
I could see the problem with saying that there are natural numbers with an
[itex]\aleph_0[/itex] of digits because then I would have 10 choices for each number in the slot and I would have [itex]10^{\aleph_0}[/itex] numbers which would be uncountable and a contradiction because the set of naturals is countable. Could I use this as a proof by contradiction to verify it?

If I understood you correctly, you want to compose all strings of finite length

with terms in {0,1,..,9} . If you write those strings as

Ʃi=0Nai10i

and let N→∞ , then(a) problem is that your sum will diverge much of the time, so that

many of those strings are not natural numbers.
 
  • #12
ya that's what i am kinda saying
 

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