Phillip G. wrote in post #963815:
The IEEE standard, however, does not define how mathematics work.
Mathematics does that. In math, x_0/0 is undefined. It is not
infinity…
What psychological anomaly causes creationists keep saying that there
are no transitional fossils even after having been shown transitional
fossils? We might pass it off as mere cult indoctrination or
brainwashing, but the problem is a more general one.
We also see it happening here in Mr. Gawlowski who, after being given
mathematical facts about infinity, simply repeats his uninformed
opinion.
“The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which an unskilled
person makes poor decisions and reaches erroneous conclusions, but
their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to realize
their mistakes.” (Dunning–Kruger effect - Wikipedia)
Here is my initial response to Mr. Gawlowski. Let’s see if he ignores
it again (as a creationist ignores transitional fossils).
It is perfectly reasonable, mathematically, to assign infinity to
1/0. To geometers and topologists, infinity is just another
point. Look up the one-point compactification of R^n. If we join
infinity to the real line, we get a circle, topologically. Joining
infinity to the real plane gives a sphere, called the Riemann
sphere. These are rigorous definitions with useful results.I’m glad that IEEE floating point has infinity included, otherwise I
would run into needless error handling. It’s not an error to reach
one pole of a sphere (the other pole being zero).Infinity is there for good reason; its presence was well-considered
by the quite knowledgeable IEEE designers.