From jay.kominek@colorado.edu Mon Jul 09 16:58:32 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: kominek@ucsub.colorado.edu X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_2_0); 9 Jul 2001 23:58:31 -0000 Received: (qmail 75436 invoked from network); 9 Jul 2001 23:58:28 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l10.egroups.com with QMQP; 9 Jul 2001 23:58:28 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ucsub.colorado.edu) (128.138.129.12) by mta2 with SMTP; 9 Jul 2001 23:58:27 -0000 Received: from ucsub.colorado.edu (kominek@ucsub.colorado.edu [128.138.129.12]) by ucsub.colorado.edu (8.11.2/8.11.2/ITS-5.0/student) with ESMTP id f69NwRH04898 for ; Mon, 9 Jul 2001 17:58:27 -0600 (MDT) Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 17:58:27 -0600 (MDT) To: Subject: Re: [lojban] 'irrational' numbers In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From: Jay Kominek On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, And Rosta wrote: > 1. As I understand it, when numbers from -infinity to +infinity > [I can't remember what they're called: real? natural?] can't be > expressed as ratios, yet we want to refer to them, we name > them, as with e, pi and phi, for example. I'm wondering what > Lojban does. On the hand it could refer to the number by > means of a cmene or lo+brivla, but can such ordinary sumti > be used wherever numbers can? (E.g. in mekso.) Well, you could (where convinent) express the irrational number in as the equation which produces it. That could get long in some cases. Further, mo'e converts sumti to MEX operands. (Which is what you want, I suspect.) Also, you can use lerfu words as operands, so you can use any cmene + bu as an operand directly. > 2. What does "LI X" mean, where X is something other than a PA? The grammar only allows MEX to follow cmavo of selma'o LI I believe all MEX can be evaluated to something which is more or less a number, right? - Jay Kominek p.s. - yes, the set of numbers from -infinity to +infinity are called the "Real" numbers, designated with the uppercase script R. That set is comprised of the sets of rational and irrational numbers.