This one has always bothered me a bit because ....999999 is the same as infinity, so when you're "proving" this, you're doing math using infinity as a real number which we all know it's not.
Yes, you're right this doesn't work for real numbers.
It does however work for 10-adic numbers which are not real numbers. They're part of a different number system where this is allowed.
You can also prove it a different way if you allow the use of the formula for finding the limit of the sum of a geometric series on a non-convergent series.
Sum(ar^n, n=0, inf) = a/(1-r)
So,
…999999
= 9 + 90 + 900 + 9000…
= 9x10^0 + 9x10^1 + 9x10^2 + 9x10^3…
= Sum(9x10^n, n=0, inf)
= 9/(1-10)
= -1
But why would you allow it?
Because you could argue that the series converges to …999999 in some sense
This one has always bothered me a bit because ....999999 is the same as infinity, so when you're "proving" this, you're doing math using infinity as a real number which we all know it's not.
Yes, you're right this doesn't work for real numbers.
It does however work for 10-adic numbers which are not real numbers. They're part of a different number system where this is allowed.
You can also prove it a different way if you allow the use of the formula for finding the limit of the sum of a geometric series on a non-convergent series.
Sum(ar^n, n=0, inf) = a/(1-r)
So,
…999999
= 9 + 90 + 900 + 9000…
= 9x10^0 + 9x10^1 + 9x10^2 + 9x10^3…
= Sum(9x10^n, n=0, inf)
= 9/(1-10)
= -1
But why would you allow it?
Because you could argue that the series converges to …999999 in some sense