Can 2 + 2 = 5 ? More help would be appreciated!

Question

Are there any mathematical axioms that would allow 2 + 2 = 5 ?

Why is 2 + 2 = 4 always assumed to be true?

is this a situation in which people might find it useful to say that 2+2=5 ? Suppose you are an event organiser and the event splits up naturally into short presentations with breaks between them. Maybe you'd get into the habit of talking about sessions in terms of the number of breaks. So a 2-break session would consist of three presentations separated by two breaks. A 2-break session followed by a 2-break session would then be a 5-break session, and it might be convenient to abbreviate that to 2+2=5.

Answer 1

Jane

None that I am aware of. In literature the phrase '2+2=5' has been used as an example of something false that should be believed in Brave New World by Huxley.

In base 10, 2+2=4 because of our counting system, in other number bases not so necessarily.

For example 2 (base 3) + 2 base (3) = 11 (base 3), because in base 3 the only available digits are 0,1,2.

Your logic in the last paragraph isn't correct. A 2 break session followed by a 2 break session would be 6 presentations separated by 4 breaks. I suppose if a presentation lasted 1.25 hours then 2+2=5 where 2+2 is the number of presentations and 5 is the length in hours, but you would technically need an equivalence sign there not an equals sign !

Mike