Monday, June 18, 2012

The gulf between the infinite and the finite

Today, I heard somebody use the phrase, "near infinity" or "nearly infinite" or something like that.  I don't remember who said it or what the context was, but that phrase jumped out at me.

If you think about it, it's impossible for any finite number to be nearly infinite.  Take any finite number you want, be it ever so large.  If you double that finite number, you still will not have reached infinity.  If you multiply it by a thousand, you still will not have reached infinity.  So no finite number is near infinity.

2 comments:

Anon said...

Reminds me of Zeno's paradox.

Ben Wallis said...

If it was in a math context it may have been referring to what goes on in a neighborhood of infinity, i.e. outside a compact set.