| ??? 09/30/11 09:02 Read: times |
#183946 - Answer Responding to: ???'s previous message |
Jez Smith said:
If anyone can explain the connection between Georg Canter and someone who makes biofeedback machines they win a huge prize as I have no idea what it is As with many company names, they just thought it sounded good, then dreamed-up a (tenuous) explanation for it: Aleph One Ltd said:
Aleph is the name of the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
A German mathematician active in the mid-19th century, Georg Cantor (1845-1918), realised that infinities came in different sizes; more precisely he showed that the infinite set of all integers was smaller than the infinite set of all real numbers, and gave the labels Aleph Null to the smaller, and Aleph One to the larger set. J W Dauben, writing in Scientiic American, June 1983, 112-121, said 'The choice (of Aleph as a label for transfinite sets) was particularly clever, as Cantor was pleased to admit, because the Hebrew Aleph was also a symbol for the number 1. Since the transfinite cardinals were themselves infinite unities, the Aleph could be taken to represent a new beginning for mathematics.' http://www.aleph1.co.uk/stress_bi...out_aleph1 I guess they see (saw?) themselves as some sort of "new beginning"...? |
| Topic | Author | Date |
| quiz of the week | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| Link? | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| Answer | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| Hmmm possibly | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| Ah, yes ... military-speak | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| I think I know.... | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| Aleph | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| Love that comment. | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| Infinity is not a number | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
Well - at least it's easily countable! | 01/01/70 00:00 |