Zero over Zero
Dr James Anderson, a researcher from the University of Reading’s computer science department recently came up with a new way to represent the result of dividing zero with zero. I’ve long relied on signaling Not-a-Number (NaNS) to look for unstable or ill-conditioned numerical problems. I don’t see how this changes things the way they are right now.
Computers simply cannot divide by zero. Try it on your calculator and you’ll get an error message.
But Dr Anderson has come up with a theory that proposes a new number - ‘nullity’ - which sits outside the conventional number line (stretching from negative infinity, through zero, to positive infinity).
I’m passing along two counter-arguments that point out succinctly what’s wrong with the approach. Well worth a read:
Possibly related:
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December 7th, 2006 at 11:58 pm
This looks silly and even better:
http://asymptotia.com/2006/12/07/bbc-publishes-onion-article/
It seems like it was an onion article.
December 8th, 2006 at 10:54 am
Thanks Adam - I hadn’t come across that one before.