Wednesday, March 13, 2013

is infinity even or odd?

from the math section of the new york times: 
I explained that infinity is neither even nor odd.  It’s not a number in the usual sense, and it doesn’t obey the rules of arithmetic.  All sorts of contradictions would follow if it did.  For instance, “if infinity were odd, 2 times infinity would be even.  But both are infinity!  So the whole idea of odd and even does not make sense for infinity.”
 if imagining infinity is not crazy, what is?