Behind my rather confused ramblings about clothes sizes lay a memory of an intriguing story about the number next to zero.
I saw this in one of Ted Porters books - in a footnote, as far as I remember, so obviously added at a late stage. It said that an English High Court judge was to decide the question of how a computer should, or could, recognise when it had reached the number next to 0.
Greatly intrigued by this. My first ever stand-up shouting row with my husband was about the nature of zero. He said it didnt exist, was just a limit which could never be reached. I said you could pass through it if you travelled along the number line, ergo it must exist.
So I actually researched the outcome of the case. Disappointingly, it never happened. The small company which was hoping to bring the action had failed & so had no money for legal fees
