Completeness of the real numbers in the context of "Logical equivalence"

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⭐ Core Definition: Completeness of the real numbers

Completeness is a property of the real numbers that, intuitively, implies that there are no "gaps" (in Dedekind's terminology) or "missing points" in the real number line. This contrasts with the rational numbers, whose corresponding number line has a "gap" at each irrational value. In the decimal number system, completeness is equivalent to the statement that any infinite string of decimal digits is actually a decimal representation for some real number.

Depending on the construction of the real numbers used, completeness may take the form of an axiom (the completeness axiom), or may be a theorem proven from the construction. There are many equivalent forms of completeness, the most prominent being Dedekind completeness and Cauchy completeness (completeness as a metric space).

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Completeness of the real numbers in the context of Series (mathematics)

In mathematics, a series is, roughly speaking, an addition of infinitely many terms, one after the other. The study of series is a major part of calculus and its generalization, mathematical analysis. Series are used in most areas of mathematics, even for studying finite structures in combinatorics through generating functions. The mathematical properties of infinite series make them widely applicable in other quantitative disciplines such as physics, computer science, statistics and finance.

Among the Ancient Greeks, the idea that a potentially infinite summation could produce a finite result was considered paradoxical, most famously in Zeno's paradoxes. Nonetheless, infinite series were applied practically by Ancient Greek mathematicians including Archimedes, for instance in the quadrature of the parabola. The mathematical side of Zeno's paradoxes was resolved using the concept of a limit during the 17th century, especially through the early calculus of Isaac Newton. The resolution was made more rigorous and further improved in the 19th century through the work of Carl Friedrich Gauss and Augustin-Louis Cauchy, among others, answering questions about which of these sums exist via the completeness of the real numbers and whether series terms can be rearranged or not without changing their sums using absolute convergence and conditional convergence of series.

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