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5 votes
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This marsupial, the swamp wallaby, is the only animal that's always pregnant
10 votes -
Real Numbers - Why? Why not computable numbers?
Do we have any mathematicians in the house? I've been wondering for a while why math is usually focused around real numbers instead of computable numbers - that is the set of numbers that you can...
Do we have any mathematicians in the house? I've been wondering for a while why math is usually focused around real numbers instead of computable numbers - that is the set of numbers that you can actually be computed to arbitrary, finite precision in finite time. Note that they necessarily include pi, e, sqrt(2) and every number you could ever compute. If you've seen it, it's computable.
What do we lose, beyond cantor's argument, by restricting math to computable numbers? By corollary of binary files and therefore algorithms being countable, the computable numbers are countable too, different from reals.
Bonus points if you can name a real, non-computable number. (My partner replied with "a number gained by randomly sampling decimal places ad infinitum" - a reply as cheeky as the question.) Also bonus points for naming further niceness properties we would get by restricting to computables.
I've read the wikipedia article on computable numbers and a bit beyond.
10 votes -
17 Klein Bottles become 1 - ft. Cliff Stoll and the glasswork of Lucas Clarke
12 votes -
Freeman Dyson, visionary technologist, is dead at 96
13 votes -
Coronavirus outbreak changes how scientists communicate
10 votes -
A surrogate cheetah gave birth to two cubs at the Columbus Zoo. This birth marks a scientific breakthrough: it is the first successful embryo transfer to have ever been performed on a cheetah
7 votes -
Physicists take their closest look yet at an antimatter atom
10 votes -
Electron microscope animation: Carbon nanotubes pulled into thread
8 votes -
Radical hydrogen-boron reactor could leapfrog current nuclear fusion tech
11 votes -
Giant phages have been found in French lakes, baboons from Kenya, and the human mouth
10 votes -
Machine learning for antibiotics
4 votes -
Upside-down jellyfish lob tiny grenades to kill prey
9 votes -
The invention of friends (Dunbar's Number)
5 votes -
Making radioactive uranium glass
5 votes -
Fair dice (part 2/2)
4 votes -
Fair dice (part 1/2)
4 votes -
The golden quarter—Some of our greatest cultural and technological achievements took place between 1945 and 1971. Why has progress stalled?
12 votes -
The Ideal Mathematician
6 votes -
'Ghost' DNA from unknown ancestors found in West Africans
9 votes -
Beyond identical or fraternal: Six rare types of twins
3 votes -
Dopamine and temporal difference learning: A fruitful relationship between neuroscience and AI
4 votes -
This is the (co)end, my only (co)friend
6 votes -
A brief history of quantum mechanics
7 votes -
Mathematicians prove universal law of turbulence
9 votes -
New Coronavirus Protease Structure Available
7 votes -
Russian and Egyptian multiplication
5 votes -
This equation (the logistic map) will change how you see the world
11 votes -
Happy Universal Palindrome Day!
19 votes -
A British cobbler had his thumb replaced with a big toe. He’d lost the digit while mending a shoe, but is now back at work with a toe grafted onto his hand.
5 votes -
Amateur astronomers have helped discover a new kind of northern lights, known as dunes
5 votes -
Deciphering the genetic diversity of leaf shapes
5 votes -
Arvind Narayanan: How to recognize AI snake oil
4 votes -
Mt. Þorbjörn, Reykjanes – Icelandic volcano swell signals potential eruption
4 votes -
Scientists just used a supercomputer to make a living organism from scratch
2 votes -
Ten years after vaccination was introduced, no HPV16/18 infections were found in sexually active 16-18 year old females in England according to public health data
15 votes -
The real experiments that inspired Frankenstein
3 votes -
Australians are increasingly being diagnosed with cancers that will do them no harm if left undetected or untreated.
A news article: Patients suffer invasive treatments for harmless cancers The study itself: Estimating the magnitude of cancer overdiagnosis in Australia
11 votes -
Jumping worms are taking over North American forests
9 votes -
Where will the next pandemic come from? And how can we stop it?
9 votes -
Genetically modify bacteria in three simple steps - Heat shock
5 votes -
Going supercritical
3 votes -
Scientists synthesize the voice of 3000 year old mummy
7 votes -
A watershed moment for protein structure prediction
14 votes -
New microscopy technique shows cells’ 3D ultrastructure in new detail
7 votes -
The other dark matter candidate
4 votes -
The plant ecology of the Los Angeles River
14 votes -
Gene and Sandy Ralston are a married couple in their 70s, who also happen to be among North America’s leading experts at searching for the bodies of drowning victims
4 votes -
An examination of over 4700 clinical trials found that less than 45% of them reported their results on time, despite it being a legal requirement
7 votes -
Big data+small bias << Small data+zero bias
5 votes