Nill

A quantity is said to be nill, or negligible, if it is small enough that it can be ignored in the present context.

Nill is closely related to the standard mathematics concept of an infinitesimal, but it is not the same. Nill is also closely related to the concept of zero, but is not the same.

Examples

Examples

In the context where [...], the thickness of a piece of paper is nill.

Non-examples

In the context where a piece of paper is considered together with the hundreds of other pages of a book, the thickness of a piece of paper is not nill.

Contrast with infinitesimal

If a large number of nill quantities are added together, the resulting quantity will not necessarily be nill.

References

The name nill for this concept was coined by Harry Binswanger in his lecture Saving Math from Plato. [TODO rephrase or put this elsewhere in the document]