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Georg Cantor: 2 puzzles worth knowing

2 puzzles from Georg Cantor, each explained in a minute and credited to the original work. Free on Savvy.

• List every real number between 0 and 1 — one is guaranteed to be missing

  Suppose you claim to have listed every real number between 0 and 1, pairing the first with 1, the second with 2, and so on forever, so no such number is left off your list. Georg C…

  — Georg Cantor, Cantor's diagonal argument

• A question about infinity that math itself cannot answer

  There are infinitely many whole numbers, and a strictly bigger infinity of real numbers. Georg Cantor asked in the 1870s: is there any set whose size sits strictly between those tw…

  — Georg Cantor; independence shown by Kurt Gödel and Paul Cohen, Continuum hypothesis

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