Abstract
When we study numbers, many of the problems involve continuous properties. Much of the earliest serious study of mathematics was in geometry, and one essential property of the real world is that between any two points there is a line segment that is continuous and infinitely divisible. All of calculus depends on the continuous nature of the number line. Some of the most famous difficulties of Greek mathematics involved the existence of irrational numbers, and the fact that between any two real numbers one can always find another number.
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© 2003 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Wallis, W.D. (2003). Properties of Numbers. In: A Beginner’s Guide to Discrete Mathematics. Birkhäuser, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-3826-1_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-3826-1_1
Publisher Name: Birkhäuser, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-8176-4269-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-3826-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive