Comments on: Is Math True?

By: Is Math real? - Grasscity.com Forums

Is Math real? - Grasscity.com Forums — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 18:13:08 +0000

[...] not to encapsulate metaphysical truth, so really, why should we expect math to be true? Is Math True? | Can mathematics be proven? Does math contradict itself? Are the axioms proven? | Clo… [...]

By: Kevin Chiu

Kevin Chiu — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 03:09:26 +0000

Hello! My name is Kevin, I would like to tell you that if I have 2 icecreams, I will be happy to share one with you if you are my friend. My dad is JQ and he is born is in the India in the USA in the China, I think in the Australia too! I like Maths a lot because I am happy to know numbers

By: clockbackward

clockbackward — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 19:11:31 +0000

I believe that you misunderstood the purpose of those examples. They were not intended to prove that “3+2=5 is not always true”. They were simply intended to show that 3+2=5 is a model that sometimes works (provides an accurate model) and sometimes doesn’t work (because it models things poorly). Furthermore, the examples were intended to illustrate that we cannot prove that math IS true simply by finding examples of things that it models well.

By: Iv

Iv — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 16:30:46 +0000

I started reading your essay with great interest as I was hoping you could prove your point. Unfortunately you lost me after trying to prove 3+2=5 not always being true.
In the first example you are claiming that the objects added might be fractioned and hence the formula is wrong. In reality at the moment of applying the “+” the “=” will hold true. In that point of time you have 2 whole units moved together with 3 other whole units and you end up with 5 whole units. After that point in time if the objects react to it and become distorted in any way that is a separate event and requires a sperate math formula that reflects the event.
In your second example you are talking about relative speed although the formula you apply does not reflect the relativity of time. If the formula is not applied and we assume time is constant your equation would hold true as the distance traveled will be constant and since time on the train would be the same as time on ground you will have the same units.
The third example is very similar to the first. You provide mathematical equation that dscribes an event and then a separate event occures that changes the value of goods, but yet you do not provide math to reflect this event. Here is an example similar to yours: There are 3 people in a room and 2 more enter in the room at 9pm. How many people are in the room at 10pm? According to mathematics it should be 5. That is wrong there are 4 people because 1 already exited at half past 9, so math is wrong…?
Math is only concerned with numbers which are abstract in their nature. To apply math to practical situations you need units of measurment which are going to be assigned numerical values and those values should adhare to all laws of mathematics. The units themselves do not, they are products of different siences which have their own formulae to convert units like fractions of breakble objcts, time relativity and price depreciacion. Mathematics should be fundamentally true as the units it uses are defined by the laws of mathematics itself and nothing else effects them.

By: clockbackward

clockbackward — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 23:44:53 +0000

Yes, that is true, but it’s just another example where addition gives us a good model for something. There are still many examples where addition models the world poorly. The point here is that you can’t use the fact that addition models certain situation well to prove that 1+1=2 is true, just as you can’t use the fact that it doesn’t model other things well to prove that 1+1=2 is false. The fact that addition represents a good model for something does not imply that addition is “true”.