David Hobby wrote: > > Another place where this kind of thing shows > up is in the definition of the natural numbers. > Do they start at 0 or at 1? On a basic level, > starting at 1 makes sense. But in set theory > (or computer science) starting at 0 works better. >
David, I was only a maths teacher in an Australian High School, but we taught that natural numbers start at 1. If you want to include 0 then they were called whole numbers. It is only a name after all, but we were careful to make that distinction to 12 year old students. Do they make the same distinction here? [Including fractions and decimals was the set of (positive) rational numbers. As students' mathematical knowledge progressed we taught them about negative rational numbers and a year later they were introduced to irrational numbers.] The 0/1 confusion was an issue in teaching sequences and difference equations to our older students, especially in calculating the number of terms, but that is another problem altogether. Maree Ludenia _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
