Why can’t dividing by 0 be done in a theoretical field?

362 views

As a layperson who is interested in math, imaginary numbers always fascinated me. Like in the real world you taking the square of a negative makes no sense whatso ever, but in theoretical math you can just invent new imaginary numbers, make it so that *i*^2 = -1 and suddenly you have just revolutionized math. If this is useful, why can’t you break other rules and account for them with new imaginary symbols?

So let’s pretend that we call them made up numbers and use *m* to represent them. Why is *m*=1/0 impossible when something like *i*^2 = -1 is not?

In: 27

29 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

We could, there just hasn’t been any proven benefit in doing so. We use imaginary numbers because they allow us to do useful things (mostly involving rotation). If you can find a practical application for *m*, go for it.

You are viewing 1 out of 29 answers, click here to view all answers.