Nothing
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Here's where you put it . . .
Donna Dodd
Georgia Steel Guitar Association (GaSGA) Board Member & Website Administrator
"Every person is a new door to a different world."
- from movie Six Degrees of Separation
Come visit my steel guitar store on CafePress! http://www.cafepress.com/zoomwithaview
Webmaster, http://www.georgiasteelguitar.com
Georgia Steel Guitar Association (GaSGA) Board Member & Website Administrator
"Every person is a new door to a different world."
- from movie Six Degrees of Separation
Come visit my steel guitar store on CafePress! http://www.cafepress.com/zoomwithaview
Webmaster, http://www.georgiasteelguitar.com
- Richard Sevigny
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Could it be any less??
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If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.
-Albert Einstein
If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.
-Albert Einstein
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Actually, that's not true. Something divided by nothing is impossible. It's an expression of mathematical semantics. If you look at a fraction like 8/4 what it's saying is the number of instances of 4 there are in 8, which, of course, is 2. The fraction 8/0 is saying the number of instances of 0 there are in 8, which is an impossible question, since no matter how many 0's you have you will never get to anything more that 0.Ray Minich wrote:Something divided by nothing is infinite...
Mathematicians have used any number (except zero) divided by 0 as infinite, but it has no meaning. As the denominator of a fraction gets bigger the value of the fraction increases, so the logic is that if it gets down to zero the fraction will have value of infinity. But in reality it never reaches 0, so the fraction never reaches infinity.
I realize you know all this. It's just that I majored in Mathematical Logic, which is a subject in between Mathematics, Philosophy and Semantics. This science looks at the meaning behind mathematical expressions, not just the Algebra. You can't divide by zero because it has no meaning. If it were otherwise, you could prove any number is equal to any other number by the use of Algebra...
Check this out....
For this exercise, let x = 1.
It goes without saying, then, that in this particular example...
x2 - x = x2 - 1 (I hope this reads as x squared on your monitor)
Factorise both sides...
(x+1)(x-1) = x(x-1)
Divide both sides by (x-1)
x + 1 = x
Deduct x from both sides
1 = 0
If 1 = 0 then by multiplying and/or adding various numbers to each side of the equation you can prove that any number is any number.
The fallacy is in the line that divides both sides by (x-1). Looking at what the previous line reads, what it actually says is that (x+1) multiplied by zero is the same as x multiplied by zero, which is why all mathematicians (including you and most of the people reading this) know that before dividing both sides of an equation by anything you have to add the proviso "unless that divisor is zero."
That's why you can't divide any number by zero. Something divided by zero is NOT infinite, it's impossible.
- R. D. Miller
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Yes, as the denominator approaches zero the expression approaches infinity, but it never quite gets there. The expression x/0 is what you get when you actually do get there, but you can't ever get there, so the expression is impossible.Dan Haas wrote:But the limit as x approaches 0 in the following is infinite.
lim 1/x as x approaches 0.
Just a little nothing goes along way...............
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- Alan Brookes
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The expression 0/0 makes the statement, "You have nothing, and you're not going to divide it by anything." In other words, "So what ? Thanks for sharing !" The expression doesn't ask any question. It's an expression which by its nature is saying "this has no value, not even nought." In mathematical parlance, 0/0 is described as INDETERMINANT. You cannot do any arithmetic with it. You can't multiply it by anything, divide it by anything, add or subtract anything from it. 0/0 doesn't exist.b0b wrote:By definition!Ray Minich wrote:BTW: isn't 0/0 undefined?