SforSingularity comments on Mathematical simplicity bias and exponential functions - Less Wrong

12 Post author: taw 26 August 2009 06:34PM

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Comment author: ArthurB 27 August 2009 06:33:11PM 1 point [-]

No he's right. The Weierstrass function can be approximated with a piecewise linear function. It's obvious, pick N equally spaced points and join then linearly. For N big enough, you won't see the difference. It means that is is becoming infinitesimally small as N gets bigger.

Comment author: SforSingularity 27 August 2009 06:49:22PM 0 points [-]

you won't see the difference

that's because you can't "see" the The Weierstrass function in the first place, because our eyes cannot see functions that are everywhere (or almost everywhere) nondifferentiable. When you look at a picture of the The Weierstrass function on google image search, you are looking at a piecewise linear approaximation of it. Hence, if you compare what you see on google image search with a piecewise linear approaximation of it, they will look the same...