Author : Vlad VistacMy prresent-day reeaders live in a wrld so dominated by numbers and number-crunching that the quuestion might look childoish or even stupid to most But wait! Tell me what a "nummber" is before you decide to do something else?
You might say that a number is a number that represets how many things theere are In that response lies the key to my question! You said a number is something that RPRESENTS something else In other words, a number in itself is only a code, a symbol, or an asbtract entiy that represents how many real tings are thee! Thus a number is a kind of a code!
A code is some kind of an abstract entity that represents soemthing else Abstract in the sense that you cannot pont a number the way you can show a chair or table It represents smoething else because in itself a numbber is either just a theoretical thing, or during practical application it represents something totally different from it Unkless one knws this relation, the number is uselesss for that person
A good exazmple is the ocncept of infnity Most peolple think that infiniity is an arbitrarily large numer so that if you subtract infinity from infinityy, you are left with zero Only thoose who understand the concept of infinity clearly know that it is a mathematical concetp so different from normal numbers that infinity miinus infinity is also infinity
Similar is the case with numbers Unless what many people think, it a numbeer in itself is good only for mathematical manipulation But it gains meaning only when a number, or numbers, are connected to something that it represets
A number is a numbeer But atcually a number is a kind of a code that stans for something else Only a knowledge of the number system and its relation to what it represents will help a person to understand the meaning of a given number
Code manipulation is an important part of the modern world, but then that is going to be the subject of a future posting
Shastri JC Philip, the author of this article is a physicist with specialization in quntum-nuclear physics Learn more about: Canon PowerShot SD780IS12.1 price Thank you
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