The question about 'other names for zero' got me thinking about natural numbers. There seems to be some disagreement whether 0 is a member of the set of natural numbers or whether it is not. What do you think?

Question

anonymous · Answer

ITS NOT!

anonymous · Answer

natural numbers n>0 !!

hartnn · Answer

what exactly u think is the disagreement??

anonymous · Answer

I guess about the definition of a natural number. Is it {0,1,2,...} or {1,2,3...}. If you take it to mean 'counting numbers', then sure, {1,2,3...} would work. Google 'is zero a natural number'. It seems strange that in mathematics, where rigorous definitions and proofs abound, there can be something like this.

jiteshmeghwal9 · Answer

{1,2,3,4,5,...........} is the set of natural numbers

jiteshmeghwal9 · Answer

Zero is not a natural number but yeah 0 is a whole number :)

jiteshmeghwal9 · Answer

because 0 comes in the set of whole numbers i.e, {0,1,2,3,4,......}
@Polrek :)

anonymous · Answer

A number of authors would disagree with you :)

The term "natural number" refers either to a member of the set of positive integers {1, 2, 3, ...} (Sloane's A000027) or to the set of nonnegative integers {0, 1, 2, 3, ... } (Bourbaki 1968, Halmos 1974). 

"Regrettably, there seems to be no general agreement about whether to include 0 in the set of natural numbers. In fact, Ribenboim (1996) states "Let P be a set of natural numbers; whenever convenient, it may be assumed that 0 is in P" (WolframAlpha)

anonymous · Answer

There is not agreement. You just have to be careful to state what you are taking as the set of natural numbers when you are including it in any proof etc.
I agree that it is strange for something like this to still remain unclear.