Thinking Out Loud Ep 2.0

Today I'm thinking about...
Is there a limit in mathematics?

A long time ago, people needed a way to count.

 ____
|        |      How should I know how many sheep do
|____|           I have?
    |
  / | \
/   |   \
   / \
 /     \

The solution is... NUMBERS!

They only needed numbers for counting, so they created Natural Numbers, which are 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and so on.(0 is often considered) This was good until they found a problem when they did the operation minus.

5 - 2 = 3         // This is okay.
2 - 5 = ?         // But how to represent this?

So, people created negative numbers and placed negative and positive numbers in a set called integers.

 ____
|        |      This is easier!
|____|     
    |
  / | \
/   |   \
   / \
 /     \

But then, another problem appeared.
Division.

2 / 1 = 2
1 / 2 = ?

They invented decimals and fractions to solve the problem.
 _____________________
|                                          |
|          MINECRAFT         |
|            __         __             |
|           |__|        |__|            |
|                 ___                   |
|           __ |      |__               |
|           |     ___     |              |
|           |__|      |__|              |
|                                          |
|    10 percent discount!     |
|      ONLY TODAY!!!       |
|_____________________|

And percentages tagged along.
All was great until the time of Pythagoras.

    ____
   /  2       = 1.414213562 ......
\/

They needed a new name for this type of number.

Since any integer can be shown as a fraction or ratio,

 2      =   2
 1

They called this type of number as rational numbers.

To be continued...

29-10-2017