Yes, this post is entirely on maths. You may hate it when you learn it, but you can't deny that it's part and parcel of life. But then again you can just ignore this post if you really want. I posted it out of my curiosity on this matter, and if you share the same with me, you might as well as read on. I tried to make the context as accurate and simple as possible with what I have assimilated after going through loads of information that is readily available in the net. I shall not assure you that it will neither be a terrific read nor a practical lesson, but I bet my non-existent three tonnes of bullion in Swiss vault that you will realize there is more to division by zero than a mere error that pops up at your calculator every time you attempt to divide anything with zero.

Division as we are know very well is an inverse of multiplication. You may know division as, erm, division, but the essence of this operative is to reverse of what multiplication can do. However, there is another approach to this. Multiplication can also be explained as repeated addition. Thus, division is naturally repeated subtraction. This method is not practical though, because maths is mainly about accuracy and speed, of which can rarely be found in lengthy solutions such as repeated subtraction or addition. Of course, that is not my focus in this entry. Sorry for the digression.

Learning by example is unarguably one of the most effective way. Naturally, that notion is practiced in school as often as it could be. In elementary maths, we approached division through examples that we could make sense. E.g. distributing x number of fruits to y number of people, donating k amount of cash to l number of institution. You get the idea. Initially all questions that we came across resulted in whole numbers. Everything was so simple. Other concepts came into play later, i.e. remainder, decimal places etc. Those posed no obstacles too, as their concepts are fairly simple.

At that point, division by zero meant nothing. It meant nothing because there was nothing to divide the numerator to begin with. How are we supposed to distribute 10 apples to 0 person? If we approach this problem using repeated subtraction, it simply suggest we subtract 0 apple out of the total indefinitely. Thus, it's meaningless.

Then we begun learning different branches of mathematics; algebra, calculus, statistics and so on. Division by zero thus rears its ugly head, or many heads as a matter of fact because it's no longer undefined in some of the branches of mathematics even though it still remains meaningless. However, meaningless stuff in mathematics do not equal to harmless kittens when applied in life. How so?

Stay tuned to find out more in the next entry. Adieu, graynut signing off.