Actually, guest...
The nth element of the sequence, starting at n=1 is (1 - 1/10^n)
The limit of (1 - 1/10^n) as n approaches infinity equals 1 - 0 = 1.
It is not correct to say that .9 repeating isn't in the sequence... It is just one of those concepts that people will feel uncomfortable about until they learn calculus...
I'm sorry, but you are actually not correct. Your statement about limits is true, but generally in mathematics, the limit of a sequence is
not considered to be in the sequence itself. This is why for example most texts are careful to say the limit of such-and-such as n
approaches infinity (or notationally, n -> inf), rather than to say "as n = inf".
I'm sure your calculus textbook must have examples like the function f(x) = (x^2-1)/(x-1) when they talked about limits. Because division by 0 is undefined, they would draw the graph of f(x) with an open circle at x = 1, so that f(1) is undefined. Yet the limit as x approaches 1, if you look at the graph, is clearly the value 2. So the limit can exist even though it is not considered to be in the function's range.
The other thing is that .9 repeating is never the result of long division, so there aren't really any concrete examples where people get .9 repeating as a result and must interpret it.
That's true. Of course, you can get .9 repeating by a
nonstandard way of doing the long division:
0.999...
---------
1 )1.000...
9
--------
10
9
--------
10
9
--------
1...