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Division By Zero (story)
"Division by Zero" is a science fiction short story by American writer Ted Chiang, initially published in 1991 in '' Full Spectrum 3'' magazine and subsequently republished in the 2002 Ted Chiang collection '' Stories of Your Life and Others''. Plot Renee, an intellectually gifted mathematician and professor, inadvertently proves arithmetic inconsistent. The discovery causes her great mental anguish, as she can no longer find mathematics intuitively meaningful. Her husband, Carl, is initially sympathetic but finds himself unable to empathize. The stress of her discovery eventually drives Renee to attempt suicide, which Carl prevents. While Renee recovers in a psychiatric ward, Carl realizes he has fallen out of love with her and resolves to end their relationship. The story ends mid-conversation, wherein a grateful Renee, recently released from the ward, attempts to explain her breakdown to a somber Carl. See also * Division by zero * Infinity * Luminous and Dark Integers, s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ted Chiang
Ted Chiang (; pinyin: ''Jiāng Fēngnán''; born 1967) is an American science fiction writer. His work has won four Nebula Award, Nebula awards, four Hugo Award, Hugo awards, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and six Locus Award, Locus awards. He has published the short story collections ''Stories of Your Life and Others'' (2002) and ''Exhalation: Stories'' (2019). His short story "Story of Your Life" was the basis of the film ''Arrival (film), Arrival'' (2016). He was an artist in residence at the University of Notre Dame from 2020 to 2021. Chiang is also a frequent non-fiction contributor to the ''New Yorker Magazine, New Yorker'', where he writes on topics related to computing such as artificial intelligence. Early life and education Ted Chiang was born in 1967 to a Taiwanese American family in Port Jefferson, New York. His Chinese name is Chiang Feng-nan (; ). Both of his parents are Taiwanese ''waishengren'' who were born in mainland China and migrated to Ta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Consistency
In deductive logic, a consistent theory is one that does not lead to a logical contradiction. A theory T is consistent if there is no formula \varphi such that both \varphi and its negation \lnot\varphi are elements of the set of consequences of T. Let A be a set of closed sentences (informally "axioms") and \langle A\rangle the set of closed sentences provable from A under some (specified, possibly implicitly) formal deductive system. The set of axioms A is consistent when there is no formula \varphi such that \varphi \in \langle A \rangle and \lnot \varphi \in \langle A \rangle. A ''trivial'' theory (i.e., one which proves every sentence in the language of the theory) is clearly inconsistent. Conversely, in an explosive formal system (e.g., classical or intuitionistic propositional or first-order logics) every inconsistent theory is trivial. Consistency of a theory is a syntactic notion, whose semantic counterpart is satisfiability. A theory is satisfiable if it has a mod ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1991 Short Stories
It was the final year of the Cold War, which had begun in 1947. During the year, the Soviet Union collapsed, leaving fifteen sovereign republics and the CIS in its place. In July 1991, India abandoned its policies of dirigism, license raj and autarky and began extensive liberalisation to its economy. This increased GDP but also increased income inequality over the next two decades. A UN-authorized coalition force from 34 nations fought against Iraq, which had invaded and annexed Kuwait in the previous year, 1990. The conflict would be called the Gulf War and would mark the beginning of a since-constant American military presence in the Middle East. The clash between Serbia and the other Yugoslav republics would lead into the beginning of the Yugoslav Wars, which ran through the rest of the decade. In the context of the apartheid, the year after the liberation of political prisoner Nelson Mandela, the Parliament of South Africa repeals the Population Registration Act ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zero
0 (zero) is a number representing an empty quantity. Adding (or subtracting) 0 to any number leaves that number unchanged; in mathematical terminology, 0 is the additive identity of the integers, rational numbers, real numbers, and complex numbers, as well as other algebraic structures. Multiplying any number by 0 results in 0, and consequently division by zero has no meaning in arithmetic. As a numerical digit, 0 plays a crucial role in decimal notation: it indicates that the power of ten corresponding to the place containing a 0 does not contribute to the total. For example, "205" in decimal means two hundreds, no tens, and five ones. The same principle applies in place-value notations that uses a base other than ten, such as binary and hexadecimal. The modern use of 0 in this manner derives from Indian mathematics that was transmitted to Europe via medieval Islamic mathematicians and popularized by Fibonacci. It was independently used by the Maya. Common name ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greg Egan
Greg Egan (born 20 August 1961) is an Australian science fiction writer and mathematician, best known for his works of hard science fiction. Egan has won multiple awards including the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Hugo Award, and the Locus Award. Life and work Egan holds a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the University of Western Australia. He published his first work in 1983. He specialises in hard science fiction stories with mathematical and quantum ontology themes, including the nature of consciousness. Other themes include genetics, simulated reality, posthumanism, mind uploading, sexuality, artificial intelligence, and the superiority of rational naturalism to religion. He often deals with complex technical material, like new physics and epistemology. He is a Hugo Award winner (with eight other works shortlisted for the Hugos) and has also won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. His early stories feature strong ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dark Integers
"Dark Integers" is a science-fiction short story by Australian writer Greg Egan, first published in ''Asimov's Science Fiction'' in October/November 2007. The short story was included in the collections '' Dark Integers and Other Stories'' in 2008, '' Oceanic'' in 2009 and '' The Best of Greg Egan'' in 2020. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 2008. It is a sequel to the short story " Luminous". Plot Ten days after the far side of mathematics launched its counterattack, Bruno Costanzo and Alison Tierney make contact with the alien being responsible, which they call Sam. They begin to exchange insights about their sides and try to hold up the peace between them, but can only see each other as digital icons. Sam hints that other worlds and alien life are a lot more common on the far side, but hesitates to reveal as much as Bruno and Alison. Ten years later, Bruno learns about a new theory by Tim Campbell, which involves the connection of certain integers with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luminous (short Story)
"Luminous" is a science-fiction short story by Australian writer Greg Egan, first published in '' Asimov’s Science Fiction'' in September 1995. The short story was included in the collections '' Luminous'' in 1998, '' Dark Integers and Other Stories'' in 2008, and '' The Best of Greg Egan'' in 2020. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 1996. It has a sequel, the short story "Dark Integers". Plot Bruno and Alison, who made her PhD under the supervision of Yuen Fu-ting at Fu-tan university in China, discuss about arithmetics and the relation of mathematical truth to the physical world. Alison insists that there needs to be a manifestation of theorems by either thought or computation, which would imply them being correct only to spread with the speed of light. She underlines this point of view with a statement about very high integers, which after 423 steps implies its opposite and hence yields a contradiction within arithmetics. Luminous, a computer onl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Infinity
Infinity is something which is boundless, endless, or larger than any natural number. It is denoted by \infty, called the infinity symbol. From the time of the Ancient Greek mathematics, ancient Greeks, the Infinity (philosophy), philosophical nature of infinity has been the subject of many discussions among philosophers. In the 17th century, with the introduction of the infinity symbol and the infinitesimal calculus, mathematicians began to work with infinite series and what some mathematicians (including Guillaume de l'Hôpital, l'Hôpital and Johann Bernoulli, Bernoulli) regarded as infinitely small quantities, but infinity continued to be associated with endless processes. As mathematicians struggled with the foundation of calculus, it remained unclear whether infinity could be considered as a number or Magnitude (mathematics), magnitude and, if so, how this could be done. At the end of the 19th century, Georg Cantor enlarged the mathematical study of infinity by studying ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Division By Zero
In mathematics, division by zero, division (mathematics), division where the divisor (denominator) is 0, zero, is a unique and problematic special case. Using fraction notation, the general example can be written as \tfrac a0, where a is the dividend (numerator). The usual definition of the quotient in elementary arithmetic is the number which yields the dividend when multiplication, multiplied by the divisor. That is, c = \tfrac ab is equivalent to c \cdot b = a. By this definition, the quotient q = \tfrac is nonsensical, as the product q \cdot 0 is always 0 rather than some other number a. Following the ordinary rules of elementary algebra while allowing division by zero can create a mathematical fallacy, a subtle mistake leading to absurd results. To prevent this, the arithmetic of real numbers and more general numerical structures called field (mathematics), fields leaves division by zero undefined (mathematics), undefined, and situations where division by zero might occur m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Goodreads
Goodreads is an American social cataloging website and a subsidiary of Amazon that allows individuals to search its database of books, annotations, quotes, and reviews. Users can sign up and register books to generate library catalogs and reading lists. They can also create their own groups of book suggestions, surveys, polls, blogs, and discussions. The website's offices are located in San Francisco. Goodreads was founded in December 2006 and launched in January 2007 by Otis Chandler and Elizabeth Khuri Chandler. In December 2007, the site had 650,000 members and 10,000,000 books had been added. By July 2012, the site reported 10 million members, 20 million monthly visits, and thirty employees. On March 28, 2013, Amazon announced its acquisition of Goodreads, and by July 23, 2013, Goodreads announced their user base had grown to 20 million members. By September 2023, the site had more than 150 million members. History Founders Goodreads founders Otis Chandler and Elizabeth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Language
English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples that Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, migrated to Britain after its End of Roman rule in Britain, Roman occupiers left. English is the list of languages by total number of speakers, most spoken language in the world, primarily due to the global influences of the former British Empire (succeeded by the Commonwealth of Nations) and the United States. English is the list of languages by number of native speakers, third-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish language, Spanish; it is also the most widely learned second language in the world, with more second-language speakers than native speakers. English is either the official language or one of the official languages in list of countries and territories where English ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stories Of Your Life And Others
''Stories of Your Life and Others'' is a collection of short stories by American writer Ted Chiang published in 2002 by Tor Books. It collects Chiang's first eight stories. All of the stories except " Liking What You See: A Documentary" were previously published individually elsewhere. It was reprinted in 2016 as ''Arrival'' to coincide with the adaptation of "Story of Your Life" as the film ''Arrival''. Chiang's second collection, '' Exhalation: Stories'' was released in 2019. Contents * " Tower of Babylon" (originally published in '' Omni'', November 1990) (Nebula Award winner) * "Understand" (originally published in ''Asimov's'', August 1991) * "Division by Zero" (originally published in '' Full Spectrum 3'', June 1991) * "Story of Your Life" (originally published in '' Starlight 2'', November 1998) (Nebula Award and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award winner) * " Seventy-Two Letters" (originally published in ''Vanishing Acts'', June 2000) ( Sidewise Award winner) * " The Evol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
