By Morris Dean
[Originally published, under the title "More even than odd," on January 10, 2011.]
I was amazed one morning to discover a "proof" for something that is quite counter-intuitive. I mean, there are as many odd numbers as even numbers, right?
Wrong. There are actually more even numbers than odd numbers. Here's the proof that came to me while I was eating my grapefruit half:
If you add an even number of even numbers, you get an even number.
But you also get an even number if you add an even number of odd numbers! And you don't conversely get any extra odd numbers when you add an odd number of even numbers. Rather, you seem to gain some even numbers—or lose some odd numbers, depending on how you look at.
Therefore, there are apparently more even numbers than odd ones. And I haven't even tried to find other ways we might gain even numbers or lose odd ones.
Isn't that amazing!
How can that be? Can that possibly be right?
If true, it is so astounding, do you think maybe this might be a clue toward discovering a proof for the existence of God? Or maybe for the existence of two of them (God even rather than odd)? Or for their nonexistence? Wow.
What if duotheism is the True Way, rather than monotheism? Or if atheists have to deny the existence of two Gods in order to be atheists? "Aduotheists" is hard to pronounce.
An odd God limerick
More even than odd...the truth about God?
Then let's swell the ranks of Their Squad,
double Their pronouns,
use King and Queen crowns,
and on Fridays eat twice as much cod.
| Copyright © 2015 by Morris Dean |
I'd need to smoke one and think about that.
ReplyDeleteor drink one and think about it
ReplyDeleteOr both!
DeleteI did smoke one and think about it. If you write out operations tables for adding two numbers, three numbers, etc., with all possibilities for even and odd numbers accounted for, it seems to work out: the number of even results equals the number of odd results. I did this for two, three, and four numbers. " Proving the general case is left as an exercise for the reader." (Channeling old math texts.)
ReplyDeleteGiven any even number add1 to it and you get a unique odd number and visa versa. Therefore there are clearly as many even numbers as odd.
ReplyDeleteThere must have been something in you grapefruit juice for you to "prove" otherwise.
When multiplying single digit numbers, there are more even products. This calls for another smoke, drink and half a grapefruit.
ReplyDelete