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3 proofs that 0.999... is the same as 1

First of all writing the number 0.999... isn't not valid but for the sake of this post let's allow it.

Proof 1:

This is probably the most easy to understand.

Let's assume:
x = 0.999...
Next we'll multiply both sides by 10, so we have:
10 x = 9.999...
Let's subtract
x
on both sides.
10 x - x = 9.999... - x
Since
x = 0.999...
we get:
9 x = 9.999... - 0.999... = 9
We now can divide each side by 9 because it's not equal to zero and we get:
x = 1

Because we assumed that
x = 0.999...
and we have that
x = 1
that means that
1 = 0.999...

Proof 2:

Because the real numbers are dense, that means that you can find always a real number between two real numbers. For example we can use the arithmetic mean:
(a + b) / 2
Let's assume that
0.999... ≠ 1
. That means that with the arithmetic mean we can find a number in between, with that we would get
0.999...5
? Which isn't a real number, there is nothing like a "last digit". And even it there was, that number wouldn't be in between 0.999... and 1. That means that our initial assumption is wrong thus 0.999... is equal to 1.

Proof 3:

This is basically the actual proof because it's per definition the same. Let's look at what we mean when we write 0.999... it means that ever digit after the 0 is 9. Let's rewrite that.
0.999... = 0.9 + 0.09 + 0.009 + ...
We can rewrite that further to
= 9 * 0.1 + 9 * 0.01 + 9 * 0.001 + ...
We can add "0" since it doesn't change the value, or more specifically let's add 9 and subtract 9. With that we get:
= 9 * 1 + 9 * 0.1 + 9 * 0.01 + 9 * 0.001 + ... - 9
Let's rewrite it again
= 9 * (1/1) + 9 * (1/10) + 9 * (1/100) + 9 * (1/1000) + ... + 9
= 9 * (1/10)^0 9 * (1/10)^1 + 9 * (1/10)^2 + 9 * (1/10)^3 ... + 9
We can pull 9 outside of the sum to get:
= 9 * [(1/10)^0 + (1/10)^2 + (1/10)^3 + ...] - 9
To write it a bit more abstract we get:
That this is 9 times the sum from i = 0 to infinity over (1/10)^i and from that we subtract 9 again.
This sort of sum is called geometric series, it's of the form:
The sum from i = 0 to infinity over q^i. There's a formula for the result of the sum if |q| < 1:
1/(1-q)
In our case q = 1/10 which is smaller than one, so we can use that formula here and we get:
= 9 * [1 / (1 - q)] - 9
with q = 1/10 we have:
= 9 * [1 / (1 - 1/10)] - 9
When we simplify it we get
= 9 * [1 / (9/10)] - 9 = 9 * [10 / 9] - 9 = 10 - 9 = 1
Thus by writing 0.999... it's the same as 1. And because that's ambiguous, it's not allowed to write it so that every number written as digits is unique.
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helenS · 36-40, F
... for some reason my reply got lost. Here it goes again:

First you will have to define the exact meaning of the vague expression "0.999..."

The only sense I can make of it is an infinite series, like this:
0.999... = 9 Σ_{n=1}^∞ 10^{–n}

It can easily be shown that the above infinite series has a limit L=1, using the usual L±ε approach. The longer the series will run up to a given n, the nearer its sum σ_n will approach to L such that by taking the value of n to be sufficiently large, the difference ε=L − σ can be made arbitrarily small. If this be the case, this value L is said to be the limit of the infinite series. This approach goes back to Bolzano, Cauchy and Weierstrass, and it eliminates every possible mysticism about 0.999... and similar expressions. (Learning about ε came as a revelation to me...)


Therefore it would be much better, in my opinion, to write
lim 0.9999... = 1, instead of
0.9999... = 1.

The latter expression make no sense (to me, at least) because the infinite (= endless) series will never "reach" its end, but it's limit is well-defined.


hS