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Awatmath.2344 net.math utzoo!decvax!watmath!jagardner Fri May 7 14:27:30 1982 Re: 2 = 1 Honestly, all this fuss over the 2=1 business! Consider the line x*x = x + x + x + x ... +x (x times) Is this a function? Is there any other variable besides x? This is merely an equation, so what are you differentiating? It's like differentiating x = 2 to get 1 = 0 Differentiation measures a rate of change in one thing in comparison to another. If there is only one thing or if there is no change (as in x=2), you can't just differentiate using formulae learned by rote. And while we're on the paradoxes, people should simply realize that the square root function yields two values in the complex plane (it does for real numbers too, but we arbitrarily choose the positive square root as the *true* one). The given paradox is just a fancier version of (-3)**2 = 3**2 When you take square roots you get -3 = 3 !

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