I mean, it’s the easiest disproof to say if 1/0 = 0, then 0*0 must equal 1, which it obviously does not as it would violate the zero property.
Awesome!
Anything /0 is considered impossible as an agreement. There’s no actual math involved in that answer. In reality you can divide by 0, but the answer has no natural number.
How many times can you add 0 before you get 1? The answer actually is the drunk(😅) 8 or ‘infinite’, but our minds can’t grasp the very existence of infinite, so we just went with ‘impossible’.
There are ways to circumvent that added concept of some calculators when dividing by 0 anyway and it will show you “Infinite” if it is able to. I remember you could do this in C+ even, but not 100% sure anymore how. I think it was with dividing by an ever decreasing number-variable. When it reaches 0 just before the calculation, C+ didn’t default to an error, but just said ‘Infinite’. But like I said, not 100% sure anymore if that was the actual way.
If your counter against that is that 0 will never become 1 no matter how many you add, then that just proves ‘infinite’ correct. If it ever could, it wouldn’t be infinite…
Sooo, this guy is smart, but also wrong in his calculation here. 😅
Edit: Anyway, voting me down doesn’t change the inconvenient truth above. 😅
the limit of y in 1/x=y as x approaches 0 from negative one is negative infinity. the limit as x approaches 0 from positive one is positive infinity. 1/0 is simultaneously both positive and negative infinity and is paradoxical.
One could argue that negative and possitive infinity, unlike natural numbers, boils down to the same thing, though. Just like 0, infinity technically has no + or -.
If your counter against that is that 0 will never become 1 no matter how many you add, then that just proves ‘infinite’ correct. If it ever could, it wouldn’t be infinite…
You’re confusing infinity for unreal numbers. Infinity and negative infinity are not real numbers, but not all unreal numbers are infinity or negative infinity.
If you’re strictly adding zeros, then adding infinite zeros nets you zero. If adding zero once didn’t change the result, then adding it infinite times won’t either. If you need to add enough zeros to get to 1, that number doesn’t exist - but that doesn’t mean that it’s infinity, it means that there’s no solution. Infinity is a placeholder for “larger a real number than you can imagine”, but when you multiply that by zero, the magnitude of infinity is a moot point because you have zero infinities.
In calculus if you’re curious, you’re usually not strictly adding zero itself like above but instead adding values that approach zero. In that case, 0*infinity really “a very small number times a really big number”, and that is called an “indeterminate form”. In that case you may try rearranging it to solve
You say it yourself. If you keep adding infinite zeros you will never get 1, hence the ‘divided by 0’ part.
Also, 0 is technically not a number either, it’s the concept of the absence of one. You can’t count 0 things. That doesn’t mean we don’t use it, though. It’s just less hard to imagine and closer to our basic calculations than infinity is.
Zero is a real number, but not a natural number. I’m not going to explain the difference because, dude, this is junior high math
Indeed, and infinite isn’t… It’s like comparing Newton and Einstein on a regular earth scale.
We do have a concept of limits in math. That doesn’t mean we ignore it. It is just more correct not to divide by zero as the limits from either side do not converge. Or would you allow -inf as an answer aswell? That is the answer if we approach the limit from the other side.
It is not only convenience but rigor that dictates dividing by 0 to be an erroneus assumption.
Infinite, just like 0, actually has no - or +. So yes and no. For all intents and purposes -inf == inf.
This is completely wrong, please don’t listen to this person.
I suggest you Google “Projectively Extended Real Numbers”.
You mean this one?
The projectively extended real number line is distinct from the affinely extended real number line, in which +∞ and −∞ are distinct.
Now tell me, do we usually work with the projectively extended real numbers?
If I have one whole pizza, and I divide it zero times, then wouldn’t I still have one whole pizza? I.e., shouldn’t
1 / 0 = 1?In this example, when you say “divide it zero times”, what you are really saying is “divide it by 2, zero times”.
Reddit? This is lemmy. Why are we talking about reddit? I thought the reddit migration was over? Hasn’t enough time passed already for the sensible users to switch from reddit to lemmy?
