From sci.math Mon Dec 5 10:12:42 1994 Path: bright.ecs.soton.ac.uk!sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk!daresbury!keele!uknet!qmw!beta.qmw.ac.uk!tdb From: tdb@maths.qmw.ac.uk (Thomas D Bending) Newsgroups: sci.math Subject: Re: I'd like to share this "poof"... Date: 02 Dec 1994 10:00:44 GMT Organization: Queen Mary & Westfield College, London, UK Lines: 32 Message-ID: References: <3bl40s$h32@gap.cco.caltech.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: euclid.maths.qmw.ac.uk In-reply-to: whuang@cco.caltech.edu's message of 1 Dec 1994 18:18:04 GMT In article <3bl40s$h32@gap.cco.caltech.edu> whuang@cco.caltech.edu (Wei-Hwa Huang) writes: > To poof: If the reciprocal of infinity is zero, then the reciprocal of > zero is infinity. > > Poof: > 1 > --- = 0 (Given) > oo > > Rotating both sides 90 degrees counterclockwise gives > > -18 = 0 > > Adding 8 to both sides gives > > -10 = 8 > > Rotating back gives > > 1 > --- = oo > 0 > > QED. Set theorists may prefer to use $\omega$ rather than oo to denote infinity. If you replace "Adding 8" by "Adding 3" the proof still goes through OK... Thomas Bending JANET: tdb@uk.ac.qmw.maths WWW homepage