Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Division by zero

Division by zero is when zero is the divisor of a numeric value. In such a case, result would usually be referred to infinity. However, if you work it out with a calculator, you would most likely get a "math error". Even if the equation seems perfectly logical. Here are a few examples.

x/0*0 should result with zero as the answer. And so should (x/0)-(x/0).

However, the most outrageously incorrect answer I feel would be towards the equation 0/0.

Here is my proof that 0/0 should result in a 1.

Proof

x/1=x

switch the divisor and the answer to get

x/x=1

Every number can satisfy these equations. If you replace x with 0, you can will be able to see that 0/1=0 is obviously correct and so should be 0/0=1.

No comments:

Post a Comment