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The number 0 may or may not be considered a natural number, [70] [71] but it is an integer, and hence a rational number and a real number. [72] All rational numbers are algebraic numbers, including 0. When the real numbers are extended to form the complex numbers, 0 becomes the origin of the complex plane.
The origin of a Cartesian coordinate system. In mathematics, the origin of a Euclidean space is a special point, usually denoted by the letter O, used as a fixed point of reference for the geometry of the surrounding space. In physical problems, the choice of origin is often arbitrary, meaning any choice of origin will ultimately give the same ...
Thus the origin has coordinates (0, 0), and the points on the positive half-axes, one unit away from the origin, have coordinates (1, 0) and (0, 1). In mathematics, physics, and engineering, the first axis is usually defined or depicted as horizontal and oriented to the right, and the second axis is vertical and oriented upwards.
Similarly, 3-0 would be read as "three-love" if referring to the score during a tiebreak, the games won during a set, or the sets won during a match. The term was adopted by many other racquet sports. There is no definitive origin for the usage. It first occurred in English, is of comparatively recent origin, and is not used in other languages.
An illustration of the complex plane. The imaginary numbers are on the vertical coordinate axis. Although the Greek mathematician and engineer Heron of Alexandria is noted as the first to present a calculation involving the square root of a negative number, [6] [7] it was Rafael Bombelli who first set down the rules for multiplication of complex numbers in 1572.
In mathematics, the notion of number has been extended over the centuries to include zero (0), [3] negative numbers, [4] rational numbers such as one half (), real numbers such as the square root of 2 and π, [5] and complex numbers [6] which extend the real numbers with a square root of −1 (and its combinations with real numbers by adding or ...
APL allows setting the index origin to 0 or 1 during runtime programmatically. [9] [10] Some recent languages, such as Lua and Visual Basic, have adopted the same convention for the same reason. Zero is the lowest unsigned integer value, one of the most fundamental types in programming and hardware design.
The cardinality of the natural numbers is ℵ 0 (read aleph-nought, aleph-zero, or aleph-null), the next larger cardinality of a well-ordered set is aleph-one ℵ 1, then ℵ 2 and so on. Continuing in this manner, it is possible to define a cardinal number ℵ α for every ordinal number α , as described below.