JoshuaZ comments on Why do people commit mathematical mistakes? What are the mechanisms behind them? - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Raw_Power 07 September 2011 09:57PM

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Comment author: JoshuaZ 08 September 2011 12:36:47PM *  5 points [-]

People did studies on that? That just seems so frivolous!

It isn't an obvious thing. .999....=1 is a problem of understanding how the real numbers work, and actually goes so far as to sometimes impact otherwise good calculus students and the like. Algebraic manipulation is largely formal without regard to the conceptual meaning. While I would have guessed that there would be such a correlation the issue isn't obvious. So no, it isn't frivolous.