How to Make Natural Numbers - Steve Feller
29th March 2014
We will start with well-known problems, such as making expressions for the first 25 Natural Numbers with {1, 2, 3, 4} or {4, 4, 4, 4} or {4, 4, 4}, and any operations plus standard notations.
Then we will use this as a platform for introducing some less well-known notations; e.g., for factorials, multifactorials, derangements, integer part, etc. We will try to prove that we can make any Natural Number using {1, 2, 3, 4}.
Finally, we will look at how, on an undergraduate mathematics and philosophy course, we can make the Natural Numbers from nothing at all plus a bit of Naive Set Theory.