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by 7373737373 3358 days ago
Really? Interesting. I would have expected it to be something like epsilon.
3 comments

I'm not sure if this is entirely mathematically valid, but it's at least intuitively valid. Imagine we're in decimal (for familiarity). Imagine we're generating our random number by drawing digits out of a bag containing the ten digits, then replacing and drawing again. This is of course a magical perfectly uniformly distributed bag.

In order to draw a rational number, you must randomly select a number that has a repeating pattern in decimal. Imagine that for the sake of argument that we're in this "repeating pattern" and, amazingly, we've already drawn it 1000 times! What a roll we're on! In order for the number to be rational, how many more times must we draw this pattern? Infinitely many. What is the probability that in one of those infinite fair random draws, the repeating pattern gets broken? 1. It's just not possible for infinitely many fair draws to produce a repeating pattern; that would be proof that the process generating the number was in fact not random in the first place. (I can't be that sloppy if we're doing finitely many draws but I believe that's justifiable at infinity.)

Imagining through this process of drawing a random number I think makes this more intuitively obvious than imagining being presented with a completed number and trying to figure out if it's rational.

it is entirely mathematically valid. See here for some math https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-point-where-statistical-imp...

The catch, here is "selecting a number randomly" - that isn't constructively defined. And to me this looks kind of similar to the notion of "measurement" in quantum theory - not precisely defined either.

The measure of epsilon is 0.

Proof: what else could it be? If it's not 0, there's a smaller number, contradicting your (intuitive) definition of epsilon.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to describe epsilon as an infinitesimal?
There are no infinitesimals in the reals. You can define a mathematical structure containing infinitesimals [0], but it's not the reals.

[0] Specifically, the dual numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_number

Interesting. How do you describe the difference between two successive real numbers?
> How do you describe the difference between two successive real numbers?

There is no such things as «two successive real numbers».

Yeah, there aren't even two successive dual numbers. What's after 1? If it's 1 + epsilon, then what about 1 + epsilon / 2?
Epsilon is a variable, not a number, so that wouldn't make sense. The probability is less than epsilon for all epsilon > 0. The only non-negative real (and we know the probability must be some non-negative real) satisfying that is 0.