Subject: RE: [lojban] 2 maths questions

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2000 04:42:58 +0100

John:
> On Fri, 7 Jul 2000, Thorild Selen wrote:
> 
> > What you really want to say is probably that the set of even
> > numbers is a _proper subset_ of the set of integers, so there
> > is certainly a well known name for this relation.
> 
> Yes, but it isn't quantifiable. I want to able to say that
> the set of integers is twice as "thick" ("dense" is already used
> for a different property) as the set of evens, and that the set
> of evens is 500,000 times as "thick" as the set of multiples of
> one million.

What is density? [Give me dimbo's answer only.]

Anyway, I originally was trying to ask (i) whether "thickness" is a
recognized notion, and (ii) how to say it in Lojban.

I don't at all understand pc's or C.D.Wright's replies, I'm afraid.
All replies the set of whose addressees includes me should be 
expressed in a maximally elementary and unelliptical way, especially
if any maths is involved. (Although I elected to receive formal 
instruction in mathematics for two years beyond the legal minimum,
my classes were scheduled at a time of day at which any averagely
hedonistic teenager is asleep, and in a damascene and fatefully
pivotal moment of losses-cutting I decided to abandon my studies
in this exacting discipline.)

> What I don't know is whether this notion of "thickness" can be
> extrapolated beyond the sets which are multiples of some integer.
> How "thick" is the set of primes relative to the set of integers,
> for example?

It is of uneven thickness. Fairly thick in some areas and fairly
thin in others. Like trains in peak and offpeak hours. And, like
buses, they often come in pairs.

--And.