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| No | 46% | 559 votes | Total: 1207 votes | |
| Yes | 54% | 648 votes |
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Add to FavoritesWhen dividing a number by zero, lets stay practical. Say, I have ten apples. I need to divide them between ten same size families (10 member each). It is usually understood, that dividing has to be in equal portions, very abstract act indeed, because in real life things are more often divided among people unequally. Anyway, in my little communism (or utopia) model it should be happening naturally or lets pretend it does. Each family gets one apple. Then nine families move away, go on vacation, etc, and only one family is still there to get the apples. When I have ten apples ( at the source) and I divide it by one family, I have to give this family all ten apples. From the source the apples are moved to the destination. Now there is zero apples at the source, and ten in that family.
While, thinking logically, I could give this family one apple, as before, and they'd be happy, while I'd have nine apples left at the source. 10: 1= 10:10=10-9=1 :) The next day nine members of this family go to New York. Apparently, my source of apples is getting renewed consistently, and I have to divide those yet another ten apples by 0.1. Logically thinking, I can give this person one apple, that's how much he got yesterday, or even 0.1 apple, if yesterday I'd given them one apple for the family. However, if my rules have consistency, I will divide 10 apples by 0.1 and give this person all ten apples (not 100). He gets more apples than a day before (1 apple) and more than two days before ( 0.1 apple). Each of this transactions leaves the source empty, zero, no apples.
Only first day feeds whole ten families, the second day leaves nine of them with zero apples, third day leaves 9.9 of them with zero apples. Thus, one person's luck grows very fast, because something was not given twice to ninety people, and once to the other nine people. Say, the next day this person gets sick from overeating apples. He does not want them anymore. I, at my magic source, have again 10 apples, but no one to give them to. I divide 10 by 0, it makes it 0 apples at destination, yes, but, hey, still 10 at the source, in my possession!
Finally, I can sell them and make some money! :)
Dividing by 0 is real, it leaves the number unchanged, but only at the source, while at destination, sorry, it is 0. I do not see where the infinity is ? Of course, if that person kept falling apart in smaller and smaller entities and loosing them, each surviving piece would get larger and larger portion of apples in relation to itself, while they would still be ten apples running the show.
In this practical example zero signifies perpetually unending profits derived from unequal distribution. In society, where goods are not distributed for free, and people have to pay for them, those kind of unending profits mean zero advantage given to the masses price wise, while reaches pile up indefinitely at the source. Plus, the refilling of the source is provided again by those, only partially naturally, but mainly artificially, disadvantaged masses.
Learn more about this author, Victoria Dorain.
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Yes
As an educator specializing in mathematics I often hear the question about whether division by zero is possible. Some of the comments about division by zero is, "the world blows up when trying to divide by zero". That is obviously absurd but dividing by zero is an absurd idea in and of itself.
Division is the opposite of multiplication just as subtraction is the opposite of addition. What I mean by opposite is that multiplcation will "undo" division and addition "undoes" subtraction. For example, 5+1=6, to "undo" the addition of 1, subtract 1 from 6 to get 5. For division and multiplication the same idea holds true. Take 15 and divide it by 3 to get 5. To "undo" the division take 5 and multiply by 3 to get the original 15. So I'll use the same concept to try and define a division by zero. Let's take 6 times 0, which is obviously 0. To "undo" the multiplication problem we should be able to take the 0 we got in the answer and divide it by 0 and get 6. Does 0 divided by 0 equal 6? Obviously not, in fact it is said to be undefined. If you do that problem on a calculator you get and "error" message.
Think of a pie and you want to divide the whole pie into 4 equal parts. Now 6 parts, 8 parts, etc. Each piece of pie gets smaller but no matter how many pieces you want to divide the pie into, technically that can always be done, albeit very difficult as the number of pieces gets larger. This is the same concept of the limit. As the number of pieces gets larger, each slice gets smaller. So for 1/n (1 representing the whole pie and n being the number of slices), as n gets larger each piece of pie gets smaller. Take the problem 1/n, as n gets smaller now and approaches 0, 1/n gets larger! Yes this is true. Say n is 1, then 1/1 = 1. When n= 1/2, 1/n = 2. When n= 1/100, 1/n = 100. When n= 1/10000, 1/n = 10000. What is happening here? 1/n is getting larger and larger as n approaches 0, so the limit as n approaches zero of 1/n is infinity. That would seem to indicate that 1 divided by 0 would be infinity as well, but that defies the rules of division and multiplication I mentioned above. The fact is, that n can NEVER actually EQUAL zero in the problem 1/n, it can just approach zero, get so infinitesmally small but never EQUAL zero. Division by zero is simply impossible.
Finally, think of this when considering division in general and division by zero. Take a pie and divide it into 1 part. That is obviously the entire pie. If someone says, "divide that pie into 0 parts". What would you do? You'd give the person a baffled look and say that a pie cannot be divided into zero parts, which is the same idea as dividing any number by zero. No the world wont "blow up when dividing by zero", nor can any number be divided by zero. It's simply impossible.
Learn more about this author, Kerry Kauffman.
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