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Why You Can't Divide by Zero (garrit.xyz)
2 points by garritfra on Nov 30, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments


Nice explanation.

Reminds me of Young Sheldon's fleeting break of faith in zero (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI5ukcG-9pQ&ab_channel=It%27...).

Isn't zero just nothingness. If you multiply x with nothing, it becomes nothing. If you divide x by nothing, shouldn't it just be x.


>But if we have 2 * 0 = 0, the inverse of that would be 0 / 0 = 2, which is just not true

By the article's own definition, there are two inversions for each operation so why is only one of them given as "proof"? Taking the other inversion, we have 0 / 2 = 0 which is perfectly correct, and contradicts the claim that inversions "prove" why we can't divide by zero.

Why can't 0 / 0 be defined to be any number you wish? The inversions would work fine.




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