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many or much (media.piefed.social)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/mathmemes@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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crosspost of https://piefed.social/c/linguistics_humor/p/1691997/many-or-much

Comic strip, 4 panels. Snail asks another snail "English is difficult, when do we use «many» and when do we use «much»?". Another one answears "«Many» is for nouns that are countable, like apples. «Much» is for nouns that are not countable, like water.". The first snail asks again "So we should say «Many rational numbers», and «Much real numbers»?"
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[–] 9 points 9 months ago*

You can have 1 number {1} and two numbers {e, π} but not 1.5 numbers. Therefore all numbers are many not much.
It's about having an indivisible base quantity or not.

I can't have 1 water, I have to agree on a reference amount first and get 1 liter, glas, bottle, or bald eagle worth of water.

Real numbers can't be listed, they are uncountably infinite. And water can be listed. I'd like to order 2 glasses, one bottle, 1.5l, and 231 imperial cubic inches of water please. You could even convert that into integers using molecular counts, but the base unit 1 molecule of water is useless when talking about the concept of water, so in effect and historic knowledge there is none.

You can have many numbers each of much amount.

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