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The long real line pastes together ℵ 1 * + ℵ 1 copies of the real line plus a single point (here ℵ 1 * denotes the reversed ordering of ℵ 1) to create an ordered set that is "locally" identical to the real numbers, but somehow longer; for instance, there is an order-preserving embedding of ℵ 1 in the long real line but not in the real ...
An axiomatic definition of the real numbers consists of defining them as the elements of a complete ordered field. [2] [3] [4] This means the following: The real numbers form a set, commonly denoted , containing two distinguished elements denoted 0 and 1, and on which are defined two binary operations and one binary relation; the operations are called addition and multiplication of real ...
Including 0, the set has a semiring structure (0 being the additive identity), known as the probability semiring; taking logarithms (with a choice of base giving a logarithmic unit) gives an isomorphism with the log semiring (with 0 corresponding to ), and its units (the finite numbers, excluding ) correspond to the positive real numbers.
An interval is a subset of the real numbers that contains all real numbers lying between any two numbers of the subset. The endpoints of an interval are its supremum, and its infimum, if they exist as real numbers. [1] If the infimum does not exist, one says often that the corresponding endpoint is .
Positive numbers: Real numbers that are greater than zero. Negative numbers: Real numbers that are less than zero. Because zero itself has no sign, neither the positive numbers nor the negative numbers include zero. When zero is a possibility, the following terms are often used: Non-negative numbers: Real numbers that are greater than or equal ...
The uncountability of the real numbers was already established by Cantor's first uncountability proof, but it also follows from the above result. To prove this, an injection will be constructed from the set T of infinite binary strings to the set R of real numbers. Since T is uncountable, the image of this function, which is a subset of R, is ...
There is, however, exactly one infimum of the positive real numbers relative to the real numbers: , which is smaller than all the positive real numbers and greater than any other real number which could be used as a lower bound. An infimum of a set is always and only defined relative to a superset of the set in question.
These are two examples in which both the subset and the whole set are infinite, and the subset has the same cardinality (the concept that corresponds to size, that is, the number of elements, of a finite set) as the whole; such cases can run counter to one's initial intuition. The set of rational numbers is a proper subset of the set of real ...