0.999... - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

With the rise of the Internet, debates about 0.999... have escaped the classroom and are commonplace on newsgroups and message boards, including many that nominally have little to do with mathematics. In the newsgroup sci.math, arguing over 0.999... is a "popular sport", and it is one of the questions answered in its FAQ. The FAQ briefly covers 1⁄₃, multiplication by 10, and limits, and it alludes to Cauchy sequences as well.

A 2003 edition of the general-interest newspaper column The Straight Dope discusses 0.999... via 1⁄₃ and limits, saying of misconceptions,

The lower primate in us still resists, saying: .999~ doesn't really represent a number, then, but a process. To find a number we have to halt the process, at which point the .999~ = 1 thing falls apart. Nonsense.

The Straight Dope cites a discussion on its own message board that grew out of an unidentified "other message board ... mostly about video games". In the same vein, the question of 0.999... proved such a popular topic in the first seven years of Blizzard Entertainment's Battle.net forums that the company issued a "press release" on April Fools' Day 2004 that it is 1:

We are very excited to close the book on this subject once and for all. We've witnessed the heartache and concern over whether .999~ does or does not equal 1, and we're proud that the following proof finally and conclusively addresses the issue for our customers.

Two proofs are then offered, based on limits and multiplication by 10.

0.999... features also in mathematical folklore, specifically in the following joke:

Q: How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: 0.999999....