this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2025
499 points (98.8% liked)
Science Memes
16932 readers
3417 users here now
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
- Infographics welcome, get schooled.
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Research Committee
Other Mander Communities
Science and Research
Biology and Life Sciences
- !abiogenesis@mander.xyz
- !animal-behavior@mander.xyz
- !anthropology@mander.xyz
- !arachnology@mander.xyz
- !balconygardening@slrpnk.net
- !biodiversity@mander.xyz
- !biology@mander.xyz
- !biophysics@mander.xyz
- !botany@mander.xyz
- !ecology@mander.xyz
- !entomology@mander.xyz
- !fermentation@mander.xyz
- !herpetology@mander.xyz
- !houseplants@mander.xyz
- !medicine@mander.xyz
- !microscopy@mander.xyz
- !mycology@mander.xyz
- !nudibranchs@mander.xyz
- !nutrition@mander.xyz
- !palaeoecology@mander.xyz
- !palaeontology@mander.xyz
- !photosynthesis@mander.xyz
- !plantid@mander.xyz
- !plants@mander.xyz
- !reptiles and amphibians@mander.xyz
Physical Sciences
- !astronomy@mander.xyz
- !chemistry@mander.xyz
- !earthscience@mander.xyz
- !geography@mander.xyz
- !geospatial@mander.xyz
- !nuclear@mander.xyz
- !physics@mander.xyz
- !quantum-computing@mander.xyz
- !spectroscopy@mander.xyz
Humanities and Social Sciences
Practical and Applied Sciences
- !exercise-and sports-science@mander.xyz
- !gardening@mander.xyz
- !self sufficiency@mander.xyz
- !soilscience@slrpnk.net
- !terrariums@mander.xyz
- !timelapse@mander.xyz
Memes
Miscellaneous
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Natural numbers < whole numbers < rational numbers < real numbers
actually you can show that the naturals, integers and rationals all have the the same size.
for example, to show that there are as many naturals as integers (which you do by making a 1-to-1 mapping (more specifically a bijection, i.e. every natural maps to a unique integer and every integer maps to a unique natural) between them), you can say that every natural, n, maps to (n+1)/2 if it is odd and -n/2 if it is even. so 0 and 1 map to themselves, 2 maps to -1, 3 maps to 2, 4 maps to -2, and so on. this maps every natural number to an integer, and vice-versa. therefore, the cardinality (size) of the naturals and the integers are the same.
you can do something similar for the rationals (if you want to try your hand at proving this yourself, it can be made a lot easier by noting that if you can find a function that maps every natural to a unique rational (an injection), and another function that maps every rational to a unique natural, you can use those construct a bijection between the naturals and rationals. this is called the schröder-bernstein theorem).
it turns out that you cannot do this kind of mapping between the naturals (or any other set of that cardinality) and the reals. i won't recite it here, but cantor's diagonal argument is a quite elegant proof of this fact.
now, this raises a question: is there anything between the naturals (and friends) and the reals? it turns out that we don't actually know. this is called the continuum hypothesis