User talk:157.161.173.24

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[edit] Welcome!

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I have noted an unsigned comment, it turns out you are a Swiss anon.

We hope that you choose to become a Wikipedian and create an account. Feel free to ask me any questions you may have on my talk page. By the way, make sure to sign your posts and comments with three tildes (~~~~) or four for date stamp (~~~~), which will let others know who left it. Myrtone (☏) 02:43, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 0.999...

Hi, just wanted to let you know that (I have good reasons to believe that) 198.54.202.254 is indeed, as you have suspected, a troll. Not just any troll, one that has been plaguing the article for a year now. He's clever and already knows that nothing of what he writes makes sense, so there's no use to talk sense into him. It would be best not to feed him. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 09:39, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the info about Mr Troll, I will ignore him from now on. Your work on the 0.999... discussion is great and very helpful. I'm sorry if I've been annoying ranting about how we should give more emphasis to number systems that make use of infinitesimals. It's mainly just that I remember years ago, when they taught me this at school how it annoyed me, so perhaps I feel too sorry for people in a similar position. Besides, I feel like the intuition is very interesting and has some relevance and a kind of correctness in other areas. Anyway, thanks for your patience.

No worries :-) As you no doubt have gathered, I am not a supporter of overemphasizing the alternative structures, but it is good to have well-informed posts from an opposing view (and refreshing among the long line of not-so-informed posts).

About intuition, I've written somewhere about how it is important in mathematics, but only as a means to an end and as a way to have fun, and about how trusting it too much is harmful. I have no doubt, though, that it is of much greater importance in other areas, where people don't have rigor to depend completely on.

I suggest you sign your posts with ~~~~; It clearly marks where your comment ends and another's begins, displays the time of your comment, and since your IP address seems to be stable, helps identifying you and contacting you. Of course, I also suggest that you create an account, but that's for you to decide :)

By the way, it might be worth mentioning that the original poster of the "Questions about the article" thread is JohnLattier, for whom I have no evidence of trolling.

If there's anything else you wish to say, you can keep it on this page; I'll watch it for now, and you do not have a watchlist. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 15:14, 27 October 2006 (UTC)