Thread: 0 divided by 0 View Single Post
 P: 129 Well, assuming you are working with the field of real numbers, 0 doesn't have an inverse multiplicative element. There is no real number x such that 0*x=1. So the expression 0/0 which really means 0 times the multiplicative inverse of 0 has no meaning, since the multiplicative inverse of 0 isn't in the field of reals and doesn't actually exist. Thus 0/0 is undefined. Intuitively, dividing zero by zero makes no sense because you are asking 0=0*x for what number x? Well, x could be any real number and it would satisfy that equation. In other words, the expression 0/0 isn't defined to be a particular number, whereas when we define division as a/b for real numbers a and nonzero real numbers b, we mean a/b=x where x is the unique solution to the equation x*b=a. The expression a/b is supposed to spit out a single real number. In our 0/0 case, it sort of gives us literally every real number as an output, which means it is useless if we are trying to describe a specific number with it. You might want to hide your post before the mathematicians see this and die of shock and mad rage! lol