Talk:Multiple (mathematics)

Cleanup required

The page is really messy. I did a few style corrections but it'll require a complete rewrite. I don't have time at the moment but if someone does, do not forget to mention about the greatest common multiple - thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stdazi (talk • contribs) 08:50, 30 May 2007

Some cleanup done, not by me. Melchoir 19:33, 13 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oops. I spammed. =( 209.247.21.231 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 01:04, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think the definition could use some clarity. Without the examples section I would have been completely lost. 67.161.249.115 (talk) 02:00, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

0 is not a natural number, hence, one cannot say that 0 is a multiple of every number. By that property, 0 would always be the least multiple of 2 numbers. (193.198.17.121 (talk) 13:08, 14 June 2008 (UTC))[reply]

0 may be a natural number, according to Natural number. What does it matter whether 0 is a natural number or not anyway? Brian Jason Drake 07:52, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

By that property, 0 would always be the least multiple of 2 numbers.
Do you mean the least common multiple? That's defined to be positive, unless at least one of the original numbers is zero. Brian Jason Drake 06:19, 9 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"whereas" or "where as"?

Someone changed "whereas" to "where as". I thought it was "whereas" and the top results in a Google search for "where as" all seem to have "whereas". Brian Jason Drake 07:31, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Multiples: products of integers or natural numbers?

If, as is stated in the Properties section, a multiple of a number is the product of the number and a natural number then 0 and -14 are not multiples of 7 because 0 and -2 are not natural numbers. The question is: Does a multiple of an integer have to be the product with the and an integer, a natural number, or non-negative integers? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.19.196.175 (talk) 18:19, 15 January, 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps what the author meant was that multiplying an integer by a natural number was one way to obtain a multiple of that integer, though not necessarily the only way. (An anonymous user has since changed that point in the article to refer to integers only; I have then reworded that point for clarity.) Brian Jason Drake 09:54, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Integer

The article said "a multiple of an integer is the product of that integer with another integer." Could I say that 2.2, -5.5, 14.3 are multiples of 1.1, right? So the multiple is not needed to be an integer, but it is the product of integer on something, isn't it? --Octra Bond (talk) 06:01, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Mathworld said "a multiple of a number x is any quantity y=nx with n an integer." [1] So the multiple is not needed to be an integer, too. --Octra Bond (talk) 06:07, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Mathworld isn't an authority on usage; it can sometimes be quite idiosyncratic. But yes, one can simply say "multiple of pi" when one really means "integer multiple of pi"; the intent is clear enough.

On the other hand, this Wikipedia article is concerned with integers, so there isn't much point in trying for maximum generality. Melchoir (talk) 06:37, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I added more references. --Octra Bond (talk) 07:12, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Those are just websites that copy general-interest dictionaries. They're likely to be either vague or simply wrong (when applied beyond everyday settings). For example, if Conway and Guy write "every Eisenstein integer is within a distance |n|/sqrt3 of some multiple of a given Eisenstein integer n, by "multiple" do they mean an ordinary, rational integer? No, they mean another Eisenstein integer. Melchoir (talk) 07:15, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would separate the two meanings into paragraphs as in Wikipedia Nederlands. --Octra Bond (talk) 07:45, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would simply restrict the definition to integers, as that's the scope of the discussion. Melchoir (talk) 00:38, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Start Class

I lowered the rating of this page to Start (from a B) for several reasons. There is confusion as to whether the term is referring to integer multiples or to more general multiples. The examples do not clarify the issue, but rather compound the confusion. The properties list is a bit short. The references are just dictionary sites except for the last one which is just a glossary list for a state education department (as an aside, this list has so many errors in it that it must be considered unreliable ... that it is a state document reflects very poorly on the mathematical education in that state.) These are not the kinds of issues that a B-level article should have. Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 19:41, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Submultiple

Submultiple redirect here, but there's nothing. Olli Niemitalo (talk) 09:21, 11 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This redirect is wrong. As it is a WP:ORPHAN I'll propose to delete it. D.Lazard (talk) 16:10, 31 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This text isn't self-consistent; the two meanings as stated aren't equivalent:

In some texts, "a is a submultiple of b" has the meaning of "a being a unit fraction of b" (a=1/b) or, equivalently, "b being an integer multiple n of a" (b=n a).

I think the second statement is the correct one; I think the textual form of the first one is also probably ok but the equation should be a=b/n. It might also be worth comparing the terms submultiple with divisor (US?) / factor (UK). If there is a distinction, I guess it would be that only integers have factors, whereas anything can have submultiples? Olliehaffenden (talk) 12:19, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]