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Name: richard wright
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Question:
Is "zero" (0) a number?


Replies:
Yes. But then what do you mean by 'number'? There's a lot of different kinds of numbers: natural numbers, whole numbers, rational numbers etc. Zero isn't a natural number. Natural numbers are defined as 'the number of elements in certain sets' so to speak without getting too technical. All the other kinds of numbers come from our algebraic needs: the whole numbers arise from the need to be able to subtract any two numbers, the rationals from the need to divide numbers. The reals were invented because some calculations couldn't be performed with rational numbers alone.

Hm... that was a lot of talk. I hope some of it was useful to you :-)

jan p anderson


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