Thursday, February 23, 2012

We are always told that division by 0 is undefined, in the case of 1/0 or n/0, where n is any number except for 0.  If we examine the fraction 1/n and choose smaller and smaller numbers for n approaching 0, what happens?

For n = 1,  1/1 = 1
For n = .1,  1/.1 = 10
For n = .0001, 1/.0001 = 10,000
For n = .0000001, 1/.0000001 = 10,000,000

Notice as n approaches 0, 1/n approaches infinity.

Can we say then that 1/0 is infinity since we never actually use 0 in the denominator of the fraction 1/n?

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