Not too be too pedantic but this is the full, accurate quote from Prejudices: Second Series, “Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.”
1/3 being equal to .333… Is incredibly basic fractional math.
Think about it this way. What is the value of 1 split into thirds expressed as a decimal?
It can’t be .3 because 3 of those is only equal to .9
It also can’t be .34 because three of those would be equal to 1.2
This is actually an artifact of using a base 10 number system. For instance if we instead tried representing the fraction 1/3 using base 12 we actually get 1/3=4 (subscript 12 which I can’t do on my phone)
Now there are proofs you can find relating to 1/3 being equal to .333… But generally the more simplistic the problem, the more complex the proof is. You might have trouble understand them if you haven’t done some advanced work in number theory.
.333… Not .333
The “…” Here represents an infinitely repeating number.
In this context 1/3 = .333…
There’s lots of proofs for this but this is the simplest one.
.333… = 1/3
.333… • 3 = .999…
1/3 • 3 = 1
Therefore .999… = 1
Thanks for this, I’m sending it to my Scrum Master.
Relativity? A light year is a measurement of distance, not time. A ship traveling at.95C would only take 4 months to travel 1 light year from the perspective of the crew. To outside observers it would take a over a year.