Over on the Diablo Facebook page you’ll find a teaser image for what can reasonably be assumed is the new Armory update for Diablo3.com. The update will allow character profiles to be viewable and shareable online, which will make it much easier to show off your perfectly geared Monk to a friend, lover, pet or grandparent. But wait! Hidden within this image is an easter egg! Not an incredibly exciting one, sure, but certainly a mysterious, head-scratching one.
Hidden within the image, and more easily visible in the tweeted version, is the algebraic proof that 0.999… recurring is equal to 1. Here’s the proof, as shown:
- LIM(M->
∞)SUM(n=1)^M(9)/(10^n)=1 - 0.999…=1
- x = 0.999…
- 10x = 9.999…
- 10x – x = 9.999… -0.999…
- 9x = 9x = 1
It isn’t obvious why the text’s been placed there, beyond perhaps a bit of casualmaths bants, but Blizzard do have a prior fascination withthis particular foible of decimal representation. From the Wikipedia entry on 0.999…: “the question of 0.999… proved such a popular topic in the first seven years of Blizzard Entertainment’s Battle.net forums that the company issued a “press release” on April Fools’ Day 2004: ‘We are very excited to close the book on this subject once and for all. We’ve witnessed the heartache and concern over whether .999~ does or does not equal 1, and we’re proud that the following proof finally and conclusively addresses the issue for our customers.“
My guess: the artist needed a bit of generic maths to drop into the image to give it that ‘da Vinci parchment’ appearance, and soopted to use a classic Battle.netforum reference. And if that explanation isn’t exciting enough: this probably has something to do with patch 1.1’s release date, right?