Stop proving uncountability by contradiction, please
If you've seen any amount of pop-math content, you've probably seen a theorem along the lines of the following: Theorem (Cantor): There are just as many natural numbers as integers and as rational numbers, but there are more real numbers. I don't have a problem with the above result, since it is true. However, I have a bone to pick with the way the proof is often represented in pop-math videos. For the first part (that the cardinalities of N , Z and Q are all equal), the way it is usually represented is good. For the integers there is the reasonably easy bijection: 0, 1, -1, 2, -2, 3, ... which can in fact be given by the explicit formula where ⌈ x ⌉ means "round x up to the nearest integer". For the rational numbers there are a few ways, the most common one using the zig-zag method. Sure, there are more elegant methods that give an immediate bijection and don't require skipping numbers that already appeared in the list. However, for the purpose of intro...