Comments on: Dividing by Zero

By: medyum

medyum — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:04:31 +0000

Back in the 70s I took a course on calculus through non-standard analysis which was based on extending the real numbers so that things like dx that went to zero were actual numbers. It was weird. First we extended the integers into hyper-integers that were larger than any possible integers. Then we extended the reals using the inverses of the hyper-integers and some extended arithmetic. We actually managed to do a derivative or two by multiplying by dx. I doubt you can actually divide by zero, but you can divide by dx which can get closer to zero than any real number.

By: Nulono

Nulono — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 21:41:49 +0000

So where does “nullity” lie in relation to the complex plane?

By: scatha

scatha — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:14:10 +0000

The most intuitive result for n/0 for all n except zero is: infinity
the problem is: there are two possible results: positive inf and also negative inf.

if you look at the graph of y=1/x you’ll see what i mean

but then, i should check if there is a meaningful solution within the range of rubtsov’s new “delta”-numbers :)

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 03:58:24 +0000

And we are all, quite undeniably, carrots.

By: Mike M

Mike M — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 09:39:12 +0000

Solve for x. Then I’ll be convinced.

x * 0 = 2

By: Jeroen

Jeroen — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 13:17:51 +0000

On second thought, try this:

0/0 = x
0 = x*0
0 = 0

This is true for every x in |R (the set of real numbers).
Basically, what he does is give |R a different name and do calculations with it as if it were a number itself, which is just… impossible, leading to all the contradictions above. In short, nullity =/= nullity….

Quoting himself: “stretching from negative infinity, through zero, to positive infinity”. Definitely |R.

By: Jeroen

Jeroen — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 23:05:55 +0000

I know, it’s inconsistent. You can do stuff like this:

2*N = 2 * 0/0 = (2*0) / 0 = 0/0 = N
2N = 1N
2 = 1

However, you can do this with i too:

-1 = i*i = sqrt(-1)*sqrt(-1) = sqrt( (-1)*(-1) ) = sqrt(1) = 1
-1 = 1

But, this still doesn’t mean that it’s useful.
We have limits which do 0/0 perfectly fine.

By: Almaster0

Almaster0 — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 22:03:58 +0000

clearly 1*0=0 then 1/0= 0 and 0/0=1 its simple if done with binary.

By: video

video — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 17:24:41 +0000

I was playing around with the audio feature.

And instead of saying “I am” it says “I A-M”.

It made me giggle.

By: Raijinili

Raijinili — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 07:40:54 +0000

4) It’s not just useless, but since he’s defining his own axioms, it doesn’t work well with regular calculus, where the limit of x/x as x->0 is equal to 1 and the limit of 0/x as x->0 is equal to 0 (in other words, it would make the two functions discontinuous, which isn’t nice). This isn’t a problem that would make the theory useless, since things like the one-point compactification of the real line doesn’t work with normal calculus at all, and he did say he would define his own calculus. The fact that he can’t give us a practical reason to use it (read: something besides “because he hates not being able to divide by zero”) makes the theory useless.