• shneancy@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    10 months ago

    what i’m mad about is that you can divide by infinity and get zero, but you can’t divide by 0 and get infinity. make up your minds maths people

    • alsimoneau
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      10 months ago

      Oh you totally can (as long as you’re working with implied limits, which you have to if infinity is in the mix), you just have to specify if it’s a positive or negative zero.

        • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          10 months ago

          i mean, implicitly it’s just whether you’re approaching zero from positive or negative direction, since we’re working with limits.

          Like you can shave down a stick however much you want, you can never reach 0 stick by doing so.

    • Wugmeister@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      10 months ago

      I typed up a very angry paragraph about how you can’t divide by infinity either because infinity is a function within the context of algebraic math, then I realized I was wrong, which made me step back and realize how fucky it is that the only number that is weirder than 0 isn’t in fact a number