Related papers: Counting Sets with Surnatural Numbers
The class of surreal numbers, denoted by $\textbf{No}$, initially proposed by Conway, is a universal ordered field in the sense that any ordered field can be embedded in it. They include in particular the real numbers and the ordinal…
The paper introduces the notion of the size of countable sets that preserves the Part-Whole Principle and generalizes the notion of the cardinality of finite sets. The sizes of natural numbers, integers, rational numbers, and all their…
Prime numbers are fascinating by the way they appear in the set of natural numbers. Despite several results enlighting us about their repartition, the set of prime numbers is often informally qualified as misterious. In the present paper,…
We discuss two main ways in comparing and evaluating the size of sets: the "Cantorian" way, grounded on the so called Hume principle (two sets have equal size if they are equipotent), and the "Euclidean" way, maintaining Euclid's principle…
Surreal numbers, have a very rich and elegant theory. This class of numbers, denoted by No, includes simultaneously the ordinal numbers and the real numbers, and forms a universal huge real closed field: It is universal in the sense that…
We consider a notion of "numerosity" for sets of tuples of natural numbers, that satisfies the five common notions of Euclid's Elements, so it can agree with cardinality only for finite sets. By suitably axiomatizing such a notion, we show…
Bolzano and Cantor were the first mathematicians to make significant attempts to measure the size (numerosity) of different infinite collections. They differed in their methodological approaches, with Cantor's prevailing. This led to the…
We review and compare five ways of assigning totally ordered sizes to subsets of the natural numbers: cardinality, infinite lottery logic with mirror cardinalities, natural density, generalised density, and $\alpha$-numerosity. Generalised…
A magic labelling of a set system is a labelling of its points by distinct positive integers so that every set of the system has the same sum, the magic sum. Examples are magic squares (the sets are the rows, columns, and diagonals) and…
Transfinite set theory including the axiom of choice supplies the following basic theorems: (1) Mappings between infinite sets can always be completed, such that at least one of the sets is exhausted. (2) The real numbers can be well…
The arithmetic of natural numbers has a natural and simple encoding within sets, and the simplest set whose structure is not that of any natural number extends this set-theoretic representation to positive and negative integers. The…
Every set of natural numbers determines a generating function convergent for $q \in (-1,1)$ whose behavior as $q \rightarrow 1^-$ determines a germ. These germs admit a natural partial ordering that can be used to compare sizes of sets of…
Surreal numbers form the ultimate extension of the field of real numbers with infinitely large and small quantities and in particular with all ordinal numbers. Hyperseries can be regarded as the ultimate formal device for representing…
The notion of surreal number was introduced by J.H. Conway in the mid 1970's: the surreal numbers constitute a linearly ordered (proper) class $No$ containing the class of all ordinal numbers ($On$) that, working within the background set…
Conway's field No of surreal numbers comes both with a natural total order and an additional "simplicity relation" which is also a partial order. Considering No as a doubly ordered structure for these two orderings, an isomorphic copy of No…
The class $\mathbf{No}$ of surreal numbers, which John Conway discovered while studying combinatorial games, possesses a rich numerical structure and shares many arithmetic and algebraic properties with the real numbers. Some work has also…
Since the theory developed by Georg Cantor, mathematicians have taken a sharp interest in the sizes of infinite sets. We know that the set of integers is infinitely countable and that its cardinality is Aleph0. Cantor proved in 1891 with…
For any ordinal $\alpha > 0$, we show how to define a hyperexponential $E_{\omega^{\alpha}}$ and a hyperlogarithm $L_{\omega^{\alpha}}$ on the class $\mathbf{No}^{>, \succ}$ of positive infinitely large surreal numbers. Such functions are…
On Cuesta-Conway numbers as an extension of Cantor's ordinals: A short introduction to surreal numbers. The class of Cuesta-Conway numbers, the surreal numbers, can be defined simply, starting from their normal forms (families of…
This thesis presents an alternative to Cantor's theory of cardinality, insofar as that is understood as a theory of set size. The alternative is based on a general theory, ClassSize. ClassSize contains all sentences in the first order…