Is only one election enough to decide a government position?

[Maquiladora]

Thats what i was getting at basically, it can only be defined as the limit to something.

back on topic: I guess this poll of how many polls has been decided then.

[J Bytheway]

Infinity, eh? I'm afraid I'll have to subject you to a mathematician spiel ("More than you ever wanted to know about infinity") at this point:

Infinity might just be a number if you took a very loose definition of number, but number is not a very well defined concept - I can say for certain that infinity is not a natural number, an integer, a real number, a complex number, a rational number, an irrational number, a transcendental number, nor an algebraic number. It is, however, a member of the Riemann Sphere (this case is just about the best one for justifying infinity as a number, but unfortunately there's no ordering on the Riemann Sphere, and hence no concept of bigness, so it isn't a big number), and there are infinity-like members of the hyper-reals too (but I know very little about them).

Since we're talking about size, here, you might consider the cardinal numbers (these are a generalisation of "size") of which there are some which can represent infinity, but there are infinitely many infinite ones, and there's certainly no largest one (I would advise against asking what the cardinality of the set of infinite cardinal numbers is - that's probably not a well posed question).

Infinity is a slippery concept because in Maths there are many different contexts in which infinity is defined in many different ways, and they mostly have different names, so the Mathematicians (with luck) don't get confused, but they all get lumped into a general, much misunderstood thing, and the properties of it in various contexts get confused (e.g. in the context of Mobius maps on the Riemann Sphere 1/0=infinity, but in the real numbers 1/0 is not defined. Despite this people persist in assuming that you can do things like dividing by 0).

Generally speaking it's safe to take the view that infinity is not a number and you should certainly never mention anything like "infinity + 1", "1/infinity" or any other arithmetic operation involving infinity unless you know what you're talking about.

Like Locutus said, the usual context in which you encounter infinity is in analysis (that is the study of limits), where infinity can be the limit of a sequence or function, or the bound of an integral, but it's certainly not a number, and I don't know what an 'approximation to a number' is.

Just to make this post not total spam, I had thought that we might say that we need a revote in case of a majority less than 40% or something, but on second thoughts that's probably not a very good idea.

This is mainly a tradeoff between accuracy of representation and length of time for each vote, and as such we should not have a small chance of requiring a second vote, it should be likely or impossible. In other words the two options here really are a good pair of options (and so I'm not really saying anything important at all - best just to ignore me).

[Pedrunn]

Originally posted by J Bytheway
(and so I'm not really saying anything important at all - best just to ignore me).

Ignore you!?! I am sure it will give me a wondeful reading with all the intelligent stuff you usually write.

I will read i now

...

*A few moments later*

"Too Much info! Too much info!! Too much info!!!
Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!"

[J Bytheway]

Do you normally read posts starting from the last line?

[centrifuge]

Originally posted by J Bytheway
Generally speaking it's safe to take the view that infinity is not a number and you should certainly never mention anything like "infinity + 1", "1/infinity" or any other arithmetic operation involving infinity unless you know what you're talking about.

Speaking as a scientist, and not a mathematician. I choose to view infinity as a number The point is well taken, but I think that it would take a pack of wild and rabid dogs to convince me that infinity +1 does not still equal infinity, and that 1/infinity does not approach zero.
As for the discreet definitions of infinity, I'll leave that up to the mathematicians.

(did I just see a rabid dog)

[Ãskallin]

Re: Re: Yes!!

Originally posted by J Bytheway


Voting in that many polls, even with a very fast connection, is probably not possible without significant life extension.

Well Iceland got the most highest avarge age but to vote so many times i think that i would have to duplicate that a billion times.
But who knows mayby before we die there will be life extension

[Martin Gühmann]

-Martin

second poll.
As the ministers have a lot of power, too there should be also a 
two options left. So a second poll for the president should is good.
On the other hand the majority could be different if there are only
For the poll on the one hand majority is majority even it is short.

computers.
compute something by hand and your brain or by using the power of
But in the end you have to use discrete, finite rational numbers to 
and smaller ones too. Of course this can be also simulated by software.
for the Mantisse and the Exponent then you can have bigger numbers
Of course it is only a number in the computer, so if you use more bits  

and it would looks much more reasonable I guess.
Actual this number is not odd just translate it into the binary system

1.79769313486231585574870450727757997810840606689453125*10^308
By the way here is the highest number that accepted matlab:

Sometimes you should do it. :D
Reading posts starting from the last line is an intersting idea.

Do you normally read posts starting from the last line?
Originally posted by J Bytheway