Ok this question was argued to death with a few members in the group that I was with in Haiti. If there is anyone smart out there that actually reads my blog please comment and let me know!
Ok so when you divide 1 by 1/2 you get 2, and the smaller the fraction you divide by the larger the answer. I.e. 1 / 1/4 = 4 ; 1 / 1/8 = 8 ; etc. So as you approach zero with the fraction the number gets infinitely larger. But what happens when you actually divide by zero?
The group was generally divided into 2 thoughts
1. My thought is that since you multiply by the reciprocal of the fraction 0 / 0 then you get zero.
2. The other argument is that it doesn't make sense that as you approach zero the number is getting infinitely bigger, but then all of a sudden when you reach zero it goes all the way back to zero?
It is confusing to try and type it out but hopefully somebody out there understands and can help me out!
0 divided by any number is 0. But any number divided by 0 is undefined.
ReplyDeleteThink of it this way, Kyle. It is possible to divide 0 by a number. You just get 0. But if you divide a number by 0, you don't get a number OR 0. It might seem like if you divide a number by 0, you'll just get whatever that number originally was. But no, that only works with dividing by 1!
You can even think about it with distributing fruit if you'd like, Kyle. If you divide 4 fruit by 2, you will distribute 2 baskets of fruit with 2 fruits in each basket. If you divide 0 fruit by 2, you will distribute 2 baskets of 0 fruit. It's about what's in the basket.
On the other hand if you divide any number of fruit by 0, you don't really get anything. If you have 2 fruit and you divide it by 0, it doesn't work. You don't even have any baskets of fruit. If you have 0 baskets, you can't determine how many fruit is in each basket since the basket doesn't exist! Therefore this equation is undefined.
Now as you can see, I was really enjoying your blog and I wanted to help you out. I originally only had the first two sentences but was super bored at work so I came up with this five page paper on why the answer is undefined. I really hope Chris, Schletz, Quinn, Doshi, Jason and Imps see this. And I hope you appreciate this, Kyle.
JT Johns would probably agree with this so... it's right. Also Bo's fruit analogy reminded me of his real life fruit ninja picture in the album "Bo's mobile uploads: for Jack Quinn" You should check it out. Great stuff.
ReplyDeleteIf you divide a number by 0 you get infinity
ReplyDelete