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Why Do Infinity Problems Baffle Even Smart People?

Imagine you have an endless bag of candies. Now imagine you give someone else another endless bag of candies, but somehow, the first bag still has more candy than the second one! That's what happens with infinity problems. Infinity isn’t just really big, it can act weird when we compare different kinds of infinity. Sometimes, two infinities are the same size, and sometimes they're not. It all depends on how you count them.

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Examples

  1. You have an endless number of candies, and you give someone else another infinite pile, but you still have more candy than them.
  2. There are as many even numbers (2, 4, 6) as there are whole numbers (1, 2, 3).
  3. If all the numbers from 1 to infinity line up with every other number from 2 to infinity, they’re both the same size.

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Categories: Math · infinity· math paradoxes· number theory