Question
No calculators may be used unless otherwise stated.
- Give an example to show that:
a)
is not closed under subtraction
b) Not every Whole Number is a Natural Num
c)
is not closed under division
d)
is not closed under division.
a)
b) Not every Whole Number is a Natural Num
c)
d)
Ask by Parry Garza. in South Africa
Jan 20,2025
Upstudy AI Solution
Tutor-Verified Answer
Answer
- a) Subtracting 3 from 2 in natural numbers gives -1, which isn’t a natural number.
- b) 0 is a whole number but not a natural number.
- c) Dividing 1 by 2 in integers results in 0.5, which isn’t an integer.
- d) Dividing 1 by 0 is undefined, showing rational numbers aren’t closed under division in this case.
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To illustrate that
is not closed under subtraction, take two natural numbers:
and
. When you subtract
, you get
, which is not a natural number. So,
certainly isn’t closed under subtraction!
For the second point, consider the number
. While every natural number is a positive integer starting from
onward,
is classified as a whole number but does not fall under the category of natural numbers. This distinction shows that not every whole number is a natural number.
Now, let’s say you take two integers:
and
from
. If you try to divide
by
, the operation produces an undefined result. Thus,
is not closed under division because we cannot divide by zero!
Lastly, consider the rational numbers
and
. If you try dividing
by
, it leads to an undefined result again. This indicates that
is not closed under division, as there are valid rational numbers that cannot be divided by zero.