Name: Beyond infinity
ISBN: 9781541644137

Beyond infinity

Even small children know there are infinitely many whole numbers - start counting and you'll never reach the end. But there are also infinitely many decimal numbers between zero and one. Are these two types of infinity the same? Are they larger or smaller than each other? Can we even talk about 'larger' and 'smaller' when we talk about infinity? In Beyond Infinity, international maths sensation Eugenia Cheng reveals the inner workings of infinity. What happens when a new guest arrives at your infinite hotel - but you already have an infinite number of guests? How does infinity give Zeno's tortoise the edge in a paradoxical foot-race with Achilles? And can we really make an infinite number of cookies from a finite amount of cookie dough? Wielding an armoury of inventive, intuitive metaphor, Cheng draws beginners and enthusiasts alike into the heart of this mysterious, powerful concept to reveal fundamental truths about mathematics, all the way from the infinitely large down to the infinitely small.

What Hacker News says

grepLeighApr 2023

If you're looking for a delightful book on the subject of infinity, check out Beyond Infinity by Eugenia Cheng.

She covers the infinite hotel problem mentioned in another comment, plus all the topics listed here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Infinity_(mathematics...

Very fun read.

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sbilsteinJul 2015

I just finished reading Godel's Proof (a non-textbook account of the proof recommended by Hofstader in GEB) and it was mind-blowing. I really recommend that and David Foster Wallace's Beyond Infinity. Beyond Infinity is great history of set theory and written in an exciting and fun style.

I came across the ideas the opposite way...I loved math as child and as engineer but I always felt like systems of rationalization had to be limited in some way. I think I started feeling this way when I'd get into debates with other students in school about arguments and we'd have equally rational but contradictory viewpoints.

Fast forward a few years later and I learn some genius had actually proved that we can't answer everything with these systems...or that there isn't a system that can say it all.

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anta40Sep 2023

Any recommendation on good textbooks? Now I'm reading Eugenia Cheng's Beyond Infinity. I'm aware this is not textbook though, more like popular math book.

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