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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Oleg Alexandrov (talk | contribs) at 18:53, 6 May 2005 (I have big doubts as to ever this article is useful or encyclopedic, but I cleaned it up a bit anyway.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 18:53, 6 May 2005 by Oleg Alexandrov (talk | contribs) (I have big doubts as to ever this article is useful or encyclopedic, but I cleaned it up a bit anyway.)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

In mathematics, one could easily fall in the trap that while 0.999... is certainly close to 1, nevertheless the two are not equal. Here's a proof that they actually are.

0.999 {\displaystyle 0.999\ldots } = 9 × 0.111 {\displaystyle =9\times 0.111\ldots }
= 9 × ( 1 10 + 1 100 + 1 1000 + ) {\displaystyle =9\times \left({\frac {1}{10}}+{\frac {1}{100}}+{\frac {1}{1000}}+\ldots \right)}
= 9 × ( 1 + 1 1 + 1 10 + 1 100 + 1 1000 + ) {\displaystyle =9\times \left(-1+{\frac {1}{1}}+{\frac {1}{10}}+{\frac {1}{100}}+{\frac {1}{1000}}+\ldots \right)}
= 9 × ( 1 + i = 0 ( 1 10 ) i ) {\displaystyle =9\times \left(-1+\sum _{i=0}^{\infty }\left({\frac {1}{10}}\right)^{i}\right)}
= 9 × ( 1 + 1 1 1 10 ) {\displaystyle =9\times \left(-1+{\frac {1}{1-{\frac {1}{10}}}}\right)}
= 9 × ( 1 + 10 9 ) {\displaystyle =9\times \left(-1+{\frac {10}{9}}\right)}
= 1 {\displaystyle =1\,}

Explaination

The key step to understand here is that

i = 0 ( 1 10 ) i = 1 1 1 10 . {\displaystyle \sum _{i=0}^{\infty }\left({\frac {1}{10}}\right)^{i}={\frac {1}{1-{\frac {1}{10}}}}.}

This rests on a geometric series converging if the common ratio is between -1 and 1 exclusive.

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