Why is something divided through zero not treated similar like an imaginary number?

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So in grade 7 math we learned that you can’t take the square root of negative numbers because any number squared is always going to be positive. A few years later we learn that you can actually calculate with the square root of negative numbers. You replace the square root from -1 with i. So why aren’t we replacing something divided by zero also with a letter?

In: Mathematics

8 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

You can do that, but the unfortunate consequence is that whatever that letter is now starts making your equations break really bad. Imaginary numbers don’t have that problem. The math with them still has a consistent set of rules you can follow to get sensible answers, but this “divide by zero number” doesn’t. Thus, it’s generally better to just leave it as undefined.

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