How come there isn’t an imaginary system for dividing a number by 0, while there is one for taking the square root of a negative number?

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How come there isn’t an imaginary system for dividing a number by 0, while there is one for taking the square root of a negative number?

In: Mathematics

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Anonymous 0 Comments

There actually are systems for this, sort of. They have names like hyperreal numbers and surreal numbers. I don’t know much about them but they kinda sorta allow division by zero. (It’s actually division by a number than is less than any real number, so zero in a way but not zero in a way).

The thing with these number systems is that they turn out not to he that much use beyond pure mathematics, and they are quite difficult. Complex numbers, on the other hand, are very useful in lots of physics and engineering, and are relatively easy to understand.

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