42 Limit Dream (Short)

[mcfractal]

So in this dream, I'm thinking, "Of course, the answer isn't 42; y approaches 42 as t approaches infinity from the right."

Of course approaching infinity from the right is as meaningless as this dream, but that's not one of those things you figure out until after you wake up.

Comments

[terrycloth]

'From the positive direction'?

[mcfractal]

Yeah, Terrycloth, I was thinking from the positive direction, then Alfador had to go and blow my brains out my ears by bringing up the complex plane.

[alfador_fox]

Approaching infinity from the right is quite possible; on the complex plane, some interpretations allow you to take infinite magnitude in any direction as the same infinity. It has something do do with mapping the complex plane to a sphere on which the south pole is tangent to the origin, lines of latitude are circles centered at the origin, and the north pole is infinity. You set the sphere on the complex plane, south pole touching the origin, and draw a line through the sphere from the north pole to any point on the complex plane; the point at which the line intersects the sphere is the point you map it to. Since all lines radiating out from the origin to infinity form lines of longitude, they all intersect at infinity.

So, to sum up, approaching infinity from the right is as easy as taking the limit as |z| -> infinity and -infinity.

[mcfractal]

Erk...

Wow, I guess then 42 is still the answer.

Now it's all about solving all the dependant variables which is basically what the Earth run by white mice was supposed to figure out.