real number
Noun
Meaning
any rational or irrational number
Source: WordNetSynonyms
Antonyms
Hypernyms
Hyponyms
Examples
We may compare a man in the process of computing a real number to a machine which is only capable of a finite number of conditions q1, q2, ..., qK which will be called " m-configurations ".
At least Obama was half-way honest about how much he was going to spend on health care. He had it at $600 billion. And the real number... is $1.2 trillion.
Some of the symbols written down will form the sequence of figures which is the decimal of the real number... being computed. The others are just rough notes to "assist the memory ". ...[O]nly ...these rough notes ...will be liable to erasure.
Although the construction is called "imaginary", and although the concept of an imaginary number may be intuitively more difficult to grasp than that of a real number, the construction is perfectly valid from a mathematical standpoint.
And in fact, Cantor's diagonal argument is constructive, in the sense that given a bijection between the real numbers and natural numbers, one constructs a real number that doesn't fit, and thereby proves a contradiction.
All quadratic equations will have two solutions in the complex number system, but need not have any in the real number system.