[Sussex] One is _not_ odd.

[Steve Dobson]

Geoff/Emma/Whatever

On Sat, Mar 01, 2003 at 09:29:03AM +0000, Emma Tindley wrote:
> Chaps,
> 
> Geoff here, on Sarah's Mac using a weird E-mail account while my 
> machine build Gentoo 1.4RC3.

So you haven't had the op then?

> Firstly - there is no such thing as a correct answer in maths, 
> maths is a purely theoretical subjects - if you're looking for hard 
> and fast rules you need to look at physics, not mathematics!

There is such a thing as a correct answer, and at one time Pure
Mathematicians prided themselves that there answerd had no
practable application, not that their answers were wrong.
The last hold up of this was Number Thoery - and then came along
cyrotography.  My Pure Maths leatures when to pains to say that
in Pure maths you kept your answers in pure form and not converted
them to decimal which was normally an aproximation.

> Having said that there is a question of the most common usage - I 
> don't know where you get your information from, but Borowski and 
> Borwein, who are responsible for the Collins Dictionary of 
> mathematics (which is specified by most Universities in England) 
> states the following:
> 
> An odd number must comply to _all_ of the following rules:
> 
> 1. It must be an integer not exactly divisible by 2.
> 2. It must be divisible by 2 with a remainder part of 1.
> 3. It must be of the form 2n+1 for some integer n.
> 
> Blatantly 1 falls down on rule three, therefore in the theory of 
> mathematics as it is commonly taught, 1 is _not_ an odd number.

INAPM: But if for rule 3 I chooce n = 0 then doesn't it pass that
case?  Or is zero not an integer?

Steve

* INAPM - I'm Not A Pure Mathematician