From: "Chad R. Meiners" <crmeiners@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Natural data type ?
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 21:57:22 -0500
Date: 2002-03-26T21:57:22-05:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <a7rbif$rmb$1@msunews.cl.msu.edu> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 3CA12AD4.2030807@oek.dk
No misprint. The natural numbers can be define as containing zero as well
as not containing zero. I know a good deal of mathematicians that define N
to include zero; I also know a good deal of mathematicians that prefer N to
only include positive whole numbers (zero is neither positive nor negative).
-CRM
"Peter I. Hansen" <pih@oek.dk> wrote in message
news:3CA12AD4.2030807@oek.dk...
> Hello
>
> I'm new to Ada and I'm reading a book by Feldman & Koffman.
> Now I see that the datatype 'Natural' is the integers {0,1,2,3,4,...},
> and type Positive is {1,2,3,4,5,....}. I know this is all akademic, but
> why this definition.
> We learn in mathematics that the natural numbers are positive integers
> not including zero..., So to me the 'Natural' way of defining these
> datatypes would be :
>
> Natural : {1,2,3,4,5, ... }
> Positive : {0,1,2,3,4, ... }
>
> Am I all wrong here or have I stumbled across a misprint ???
>
> /Peter
>
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2002-03-27 2:57 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 12+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2002-03-27 2:13 Natural data type ? Peter I. Hansen
2002-03-27 2:57 ` Chad R. Meiners [this message]
2002-03-27 23:18 ` Peter I. Hansen
2002-03-28 3:55 ` Chad R. Meiners
2002-03-28 15:40 ` Marin David Condic
2002-03-28 16:47 ` Peter I. Hansen
2002-03-27 14:25 ` Marin David Condic
2002-03-28 16:45 ` Peter I. Hansen
2002-03-28 16:30 ` Georg Bauhaus
2002-03-28 16:42 ` Peter I. Hansen
2002-03-28 18:33 ` Darren New
2002-03-29 16:19 ` Georg Bauhaus
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