I might have just disproved math.

[Bomberman4000]

I clicked on this thread because I was intrigued by the title. I then read 3 pages of people stating and restating that you can't divide or multiply (i cringed when I read "times" in the first post) and 3 pages of essentially calling the OP an idiot for thinking he has accomplished something remarkable in mathematics.

And no, you don't get credit for thinking about something incorrectly. I do however give you credit for posting something that openly leads you to criticism from strangers on the internet using anonymity as their badge of courage. However, anything divided by 0 will always be impossible to calculate. In philosophy (which I believe someone mentioned earlier) yes you would get credit for challenging what we know and pushing ourselves to think about understood concepts in different ways, but in math, not so much.

 

[balanovich]

I realize something is most likely wrong here.
So tell me escapist, Did i Disprove math?
Edit: I see the error now. Its not that x equals 0 its that at one point x CAN = 0

No, the error is to start with x=0/0.
Division by 0 is not defined. It does not exist in math.
You are just not doing math.

 

[DracoSuave]

I actuality want to understand why this is wrong past the usual argument of "Well you just cant divide by zero" That might be true but i have yet to find a person to tell me why I cant.

You didn't disprove math.

Math says that what you describe is exactly what happens... that n/0=x is always going to leave x undefined.

So... you agree with math.

That's the opposite of disproving it.

I think it stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what 'disprove' means. It means 'to prove something false.'

Next time you seek to disprove something, find out what exactly that something you want to disprove is. Then you may proceed to disprove it.

Which is my point from the start. Division with numbers lower than between 0 and 1 doesn't make sense with real life applications. It's a part of math because it adds up with everything else. We can't divide something and get more than we had in the first place.

Also I don't know if this is a coincidence, if the thought of breaking things slipped into my unconsciousness or karma for being obnoxious about this, but I was just about to do the dishes and I lost a plate and it broke into 3 pieces.

What.

Wrong. Dividing with a number between 0 and 1, or even negative numbers does have real life applications.

For example:

You have something that has an on sale price tag of 5 dollars, after 20% off. What was the original price? (5/0.80)

You're taking a car ride that's 20 miles long. You've got half an hour to get there. How fast do you have to drive? (20/0.5)

You've got enough planks of wood to cover one square yard. Your shelves is going to be half a foot thick. How much shelving, in width, can you make? 9/(1/6)

Hey look! Dividing by numbers below 1! With real world applications!

As for negative numbers... well... off the top of my head I hear that anything with electricity has math involving that in its make. Like that computer you love.


Every piece of technology, every object, every single thing created by man is a 'real life application.' The flow of water into your house, the computer you use to reach the internet, the design of the internet itself, the little beams of electricity that light your monitor, the microwave you cook your food in, the motor running the fan in your computer, the car/bus/taxi you used to get to school/work today....

EVERYTHING uses math. Every. Single. Thing.

 

[MPerce]

Is this now a "laugh at OP for not understanding math" thread?

No, I won't laugh at you, OP. I suck at math, too, so I don't feel like I have a right to make fun of others in this field.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Hmm. While there are philosophical concepts that can in principle 'disprove' maths, what you've done isn't anywhere near it.

Something far more significant would be the incompleteness theorem (which in effect shows there is no way to prove if there are any statements which cannot be defined mathematically)

And... More fundamentally, the basis of mathematics, the axiom is a little shaky philosophically speaking.

Now, arguments about axioms don't really disprove maths as a subject, (Because it still works either way), but they do raise questions about it's validity, and it's applicability to reality.

This is because an axiom is something defined as follows:

Assume X to be true. (That's the axiom)
Therefore... (That's the mathematics.)

But since the axiom contains the statement. assume you don't actually know if it is valid or not, and you have no real way of proving it.

(Yes, many axioms can be proved. But that's because they aren't fundamental axioms. They are merely short-hand for really complex proofs. Proving 1+1 = 2 is actually unbelievably complicated if you were to do it starting from the fundamental axioms...)

 

[Maze1125]

However, I'm going to need some citation on the part of you stating that imaginery numbers have an application beyond thought experiment.

How about the entirety of Quantum_Mechanics [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics]?

"Mathematical manipulations of the wavefunction usually involve the bra-ket notation, which requires an understanding of complex numbers and linear functionals."

Since 'i' is literally representing a paradox,

No it's representing the square root of -1.
"Has no solutions in the real numbers." is not the same thing as "A literal paradox."

it smacks of carelessness. "We didn't feel like figuring out where this leftover piece of the puzzle actually comes from, so here, have a Lowercase-I."

What do you mean "We didn't figure out where it came from so we just made it up."? Mathematicians did figure it out, it comes from the complex numbers. Which aren't any more made up than the real numbers. Yeah, we choose to label it as "i", but we labelled all the other numbers too. "1" "2" "3" etc., they're all just labels for concepts.

There was a time when people refused to believe negative numbers were any more than made up nonsense with no practical application, and then the same for irrational numbers.

...but it doesn't cry out as the pinnacle of precision anymore.

Well, you're simply wrong, mathematics is more precise nowadays than it has ever been. And no, it isn't a matter of opinion, there are mathematicians who spend their life doing almost nothing but making the definitions of concepts more precise or, more precisely, more concise.

Just because mathematics it constantly expands itself, does not mean mathematicians don't ensure it is done in a precise way.

And Discreet Mathimatics is very much this. It's the metaphysics of math that gives way to some interesting thoughts, but it's not logic and it's not science anymore.

Hardly, there are hypothesises in science today that suggest the universe is in fact discrete, not continuous as assumed, if so, then discrete mathematics is exactly what science need. Further, there are many things that exist today which require discrete models.

And this goes back to my point before. Why should mathematics wait until a concept is needed before researching it? That wastes years of time. So many times science has needed a new mathematical idea and it's been there waiting, full researched and usable, precisely because of mathematicians doing what you call pointless. Why are you advocating for that to stop?

You follow my meaning, right?

As far as I can tell, you've had a high school level of maths taught to you, or perhaps a basic university level, neither of which are nearly enough to understand why the concepts we have exist, and yet you think you're qualified to judge why they exist.

 

[mcnally86]

So, I have an interesting math based question. If you don't like/hate math or don't understand basic algebra(I understand if you don't) just hit the big THE ESCAPIST logo in the corner and that will bring you home.

I wanted to know zero divided by zero equals. I tried to do at algebraically. This is what I did:

-The answer I was trying to get will be represented by x
0/0=x
-I times both sides by zero
0=0x
-This equals out to be 0=0 because anything times 0 is 0.
-This proves that x can be any number. for example if 5=x than 0=5*0 still is 0=0
-I rearrange 0=0x to be:
0/x=0
-Now since x can be any number now lets say x=0
-That makes this:
0/0=0
-And since x=0/0 (Right in the beginning^) and 0=0/0 also then x=0
-If you fallowed so far and remember that x can be any number then that means zero can also be any and every number. So 0 can now equal 5 or any other number.

I realize something is most likely wrong here.
So tell me escapist, Did i Disprove math?

Disproved math? No. Proved that you hardly know anything about math? Yes.

I bolded the part where you completely missed the point and made a conclusion that could only be characterized as and "ass pull", because 0/0 is an undefined expression.

So if 0/0=x and 0/0=0 then 0 does not equal x? I don't understand what you mean, please elaborate. I actuality want to understand why this is wrong past the usual argument of "Well you just cant divide by zero" That might be true but i have yet to find a person to tell me why I cant.

Think of divisions this way. You have 6 kittens divided among 2 boxes. There will be 3 kittens in each box.
6/2=3
What about six kittens divided evenly into one box. Well then all 6 kittens go in that box.
6/1=6

Now I have 6 kittens. I divide the cats into no boxes, how many cats are in each box?
6/0= question makes no sense.

 

[Pandaman1911]

0/0 is an undefined equation. It's not zero, it's not anything, because you can't divide anything by zero. This just proves that you're uneducated in the finer points of that particular branch of math. Nothing to be ashamed of, just learn you a book.

-I times both sides by zero

*shiver*

 

[SamuelT]

Zero is a callous *****. She doesn't adhere to the same rules as normal numbers do. I think therein lies the mistka eyou made.

Good attempt though.

 

[Maze1125]

I wanted to know zero divided by zero equals. I tried to do at algebraically. This is what I did:

-The answer I was trying to get will be represented by x
0/0=x

This is where you're wrong. Anything divided by zero doesn't exist.
Let's say that you have Dota 2 passes to give to your friends. If you have 5 friends then then each get 2 passes because 10/5=2. If you only have 1 friend and you still have 10 copies then the friend gets 10 copies because 10/1=10.
Now, what happens if you have 10 copies but no friends at all to share them with? How is it divided up? It is impossible and completely meaningless.

If you have 10 copies and no friends to give them to, then each friend can have as many copies as they want. You can give every friend you have 10 zillion copies and you'd still have 10 left to give out, you could then give another 10 zillion to each friend on top of that and you'd still have 10 left.

Hence there is an answer, the answer is infinity, because that's how many you'd have to hand out to every friend in order to have none left.

 

[Maze1125]

I don't think OP is completely able to conceptualize the mathematics involved.

You're right there.
But, as I said before, the OP is still able to conceptualize the concepts a hell of a lot better than the people who are telling them that they're wrong.

 

[mcnally86]

I believe it's fair that I started calling bullshit when we started on imaginary numbers, as though working with ones that actually exist wasn't good enough.

Imaginary numbers are just a name, they aren't actually any more imaginary than the real numbers.
Physicists use imaginary numbers to solve real problems every single day. Without imaginary numbers we wouldn't have the monitors you're using to read the posts people make on this site, they have very real and practical uses.

The same is true of a lot of maths. It may start as someone's "cool idea", but so many many advances in science have come from maths that someone just made up for the hell of it. If mathematicians waited until maths was useful before they came up with it, then our technology would be at least 50 years behind where it is today.

That part was actually a joke, the imaginery VS real bit. However, I'm going to need some citation on the part of you stating that imaginery numbers have an application beyond thought experiment. Since 'i' is literally representing a paradox, and that this is actually the tamest aspect of math acting less like science and more like philosophy, it smacks of carelessness. "We didn't feel like figuring out where this leftover piece of the puzzle actually comes from, so here, have a Lowercase-I." This is where math sort of falls short for me. I understand the logic you place behind it, pass the course, and move on...but it doesn't cry out as the pinnacle of precision anymore. And Discreet Mathimatics is very much this. It's the metaphysics of math that gives way to some interesting thoughts, but it's not logic and it's not science anymore. You follow my meaning, right?

Ham radio operators live off imaginary numbers. A lot of electronic work requiring frequency use triangulation with j. BTW its j now not i. j got the job as the imaginary letter because the i could be confused with other letters used in electronic math. Basically you graph real numbers on the x line of a graph and the imaginary fellows on the y line. I won't explain why because I don't know your background in radio operation but the easiest example is the impedance of a wire carrying a signal can be calculated with the help of algebra and imaginary numbers.

 

[Zelcor]

You can't throw in random numbers as x since you CLEARLY defined it as 0/0 at the beginning

 

[Bento Box]

0/0 !=0

I saw a video of a guy figuring out a way to divide by zero once. It was basically a really pretentious cop-out where the ultimate result was just drawing a number off of, and separate from, the number line, and calling it 'nullity.' It made my brain rage, and I'm not even a math nut -- I just recognize pretentious cockery when I see it.

You can't divide by zero. You can't even divide zero by itself. The answer is always infinity, or negative infinity, or in the case of dividing zero by zero, every number in the universe, all at the same time. It's two impossibilities and a paradox. No good.

Or, as I was taught in school, the answer was always 'undefined.'

 

[asacatman]

0/0 is undefined. Bam, that solves the problem. If you want more explanation, this means your original premise 0/0=x, is rubbish and makes no sense. Nice try though.

 

[asacatman]

Everyone who says "you cannot divide by 0" has never taken calculus.

So, I have an interesting math based question. If you don't like/hate math or don't understand basic algebra(I understand if you don't) just hit the big THE ESCAPIST logo in the corner ...snip... 0/0 also then x=0
-If you fallowed so far and remember that x can be any number then that means zero can also be any and every number. So 0 can now equal 5 or any other number.

I realize something is most likely wrong here.
So tell me escapist, Did i Disprove math?

None of your math is incorrect, but your conclusion is slightly off.

What you are doing here is better dealt with with calculus than algebra, but the short version is this:

First, you are correct in saying that 0 divided by 0 MIGHT equal a number.

Calculus shows that 0 divided by 0 has four possible answers.
Those answers are 0, 1, undefined, or infinity.

It all depends on what the actual value of 0 is.


So, no, you did not disprove math. What you actually did was discover some very developed mathematical ideas.

Whoah, whoah whoah. I've done a bit of calculus for my A level (16-18 year old thing if you're not british) maths, but I've never come across this. You mean analysis when you say calculus right? Also 'It all depends on what the actual value of 0 is.' What is this sorcery? Surely 0 is a fairly concrete concept? Show me a wikipedia link or something, otherwise I'm gonna have to assume you are incorrect.

*time spent researching passes*

Ok I'm now pretty sure you are wrong. I know wikipedia isn't the most reliable source, but here is what it has to say:

'In ordinary (real number) arithmetic, the expression has no meaning, as there is no number which, multiplied by 0, gives a (a?0), and so we say that division by zero is undefined.'

Even in two places where the concept of infinty is allowed, non standard anaylisis and the rimeman sphere:
'In the Riemann sphere,1/0=infinity , but 0/0 is undefined'
'In the hyperreal numbers and the surreal numbers, division by zero is still impossible'

And finally under the 'In Calculus' section: 'These and other similar facts show that the expression 0/0 cannot be well-defined as a limit.'

What are you smoking boy?

EDIT: whoops double post sorry.
EDIT2: after seeing someone else's post, I take back the 'what are you smoking, boy?' part, pending further explanation. You could well be right about this thing.

 

[J.j. Trusello]

thewaever is right in his above statement
OP:You said that you solved this equation by using algebra but that in itself is the problem. This is not an algebra problem it is a calculus problem with multiple answers but not an infinite number of answers. So no you didn't disprove math your just using a form of math that is insufficient to solve the problem.

 

[Evil Teddie]

Dividing by zero, let's explain this simply. There are 10 sweets on the table and 2 people at the table, so they get 5 sweets each, because 5x2=10 and 10/2=5. Let's try it with 0: 10 sweets on the table, 0 people at the table. How many sweets do they get. Go on, try and process that. That's why the answer is said to be 'undefined'.

 

[Marcosn]

"Ayah! Magic can only be defeated magic!"

Nope, sticking with my guns. Philosophy.

Jackie Chan adventures reference? Brilliant!

And it's painful every time someone makes a thread thinking they beat maths etc ... Though at least this doesn't come up as much as people arguing whether 0.9999... = 1

 

[Agow95]

Does it help that nothing can be divided by zero?