What’s stopping mathematicians from defining a number for 1 ÷ 0, like what they did with √-1?

815 viewsMathematicsOther

What’s stopping mathematicians from defining a number for 1 ÷ 0, like what they did with √-1?

In: Mathematics

21 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

I’m going to take a stab actually going for an ELI5 answer… Which is to say it’ll be mathematically wrongish but hopefully useful for a 5 year old to understand generally.

> Divide by 0 doesn’t have a name because it’s not just one weird number. It’s different weird numbers depending on when you ask. It’s like asking “what color is a rainbow?” and expecting a single response. The best answer is “it depends where you look” it’s not that rainbows don’t have colors, they’re full of color, but there is no single color to describe what color a rainbow looks like.

You are viewing 1 out of 21 answers, click here to view all answers.