[REBOL] Re: Natural numbers
From: joel:neely:fedex at: 4-Jul-2001 4:51
Hi, Alek,
Alekk wrote:
> [...]
> > the series of natural numbers
> >
> > 0 1 2 3 4 5 ....... infinity
> >
> > which is the first number? 0 or 1 ?
> [...]
>
> But there are two shools -
>
> first - as You said
> second - that natural numbers starts from 1...
>
I'm sorry, but this is neither a matter of opinion nor of
popular vote. The standard model in Mathematics is known
as "Peano's Postulates" or "Peano's Axioms", after Giuseppe
Peano (1858-1932), the brilliant Italian mathematician and
logician. The full set of axioms states:
- 0 is a natural number.
- The (unique) successor of any natural number is
a natural number.
- No two numbers have the same successor.
- 0 is not the successor of any number.
- If P is a property over the natural numbers
such that
- P(0) is true, and
- P(n+1) is true whenever P(n) is true
then P is true for all natural numbers.
The last of these, of course, is the principle of mathematical
induction, which has direct application to programming.
Suppose I have some expressions in the following schema
; point 0
while [loop-cond] [
; point n
loop-action
; point n+1
]
; point z
Now, suppose there is some property (of my computation) that
holds at "point 0", and is preserved by LOOP-ACTION -- i.e.,
if it is true at "point n" then it will still be true at
point n+1
. Then, by mathematical induction, I can conclude
that at "point z" I will know that the property still holds
true, and that LOOP-COND is false. The induction, of course,
is over the number of times LOOP-ACTION has been evaluated,
and that count is 0 prior to any evaluations of the loop.
(Corresponding reasoning holds for schemata using other loop
control functions as well.)
Recognizing 0 as the origin of the natural numbers is both
explicit in Peano's Axioms, and too fundamentally useful to
give up. We learned long ago (from negative experience with
FORTRAN, actually ;-) that requiring a minimum loop count of
one instead of zero is often entirely too awkward.
...feeling too loopy to continue ... ;-)
-jn-
------------------------------------------------------------
Programming languages: compact, powerful, simple ...
Pick any two!
joel'dot'neely'at'fedex'dot'com
