One more Trivia... not really.

[G Gabriel]

OK.. one more and no more for a while.
What's wrong with this picture?

?3/0
= 0

[Al Buchholz]

Re: One more Trivia... not really.

n=1
d=0

if d <> 0 then
result=n/d
else
msgbox("Division by Zero is undefined")
end if

[G Gabriel]

Re: One more Trivia... not really.

Al:
What you provided is a work-around, but what is wrong with this picture is that 3/0 does not equal zero.
It's a bug.
I am not sure if it is alpha or maybe a dbf limitations.
At any rate, it's something that everyone has to keep in mind.

[aRob]

Re: One more Trivia... not really.

Submit a bug report. It's also a bug in the MOD function.
?MOD(2,0)
= 0
is wrong

In Foxpro, ordinary 'divide by zero' won't give an error but using zero as the second argument of a MOD function will give an error. Displaying a divide by zero shows only stars **** but you can assign the result to a variable and do calculations with it. It probably saves it as the largest possible number. I wonder what dBase used to do?

[Al Buchholz]

Re: One more Trivia... not really.

Al:
What you provided is a work-around, but what is wrong with this picture is that 3/0 does not equal zero.
It's a bug.
I am not sure if it is alpha or maybe a dbf limitations.
At any rate, it's something that everyone has to keep in mind.

G, I thought I was doing all three......

[G Gabriel]

Re: One more Trivia... not really.

You got 2 out of 3
The correct answer is "Infinity" not "undefined". Maybe that's what you meant.
Since no computer, not now not ever, can possibly accept infinity as a value, different applications give different answers, mostly producing an error.
But zero is not a good one, not acceptable.

Speaking of Zero and Infinity:
Zero might sound like a simple concept to understand. Not so.
No human mind, no human ever lived or will ever live, can possiblly comprehend the concept of zero much less infinity nor incorporate that intelligently in an equation. That's when math turns into mashed potatoes.
Will talk about that later, I am in a bit of a hurry now.

[Al Buchholz]

Re: One more Trivia... not really.

You got 2 out of 3
The correct answer is "Infinity" not "undefined". Maybe that's what you meant.
Since no computer, not now not ever, can possibly accept infinity as a value, different applications give different answers, mostly producing an error.
But zero is not a good one, not acceptable.

Speaking of Zero and Infinity:
Zero might sound like a simple concept to understand. Not so.
No human mind, no human ever lived or will ever live, can possiblly comprehend the concept of zero much less infinity nor incorporate that intelligently in an equation. That's when math turns into mashed potatoes.
Will talk about that later, I am in a bit of a hurry now.

http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.divideby0.html

There are other sites that explain this as well...

[Steve Andrews]

Re: One more Trivia... not really.

The correct answer is "Infinity" not "undefined".

I will have to agree with Al. In the world of Mathematics, any number divided by zero is NOT equal to infinity. It is simply "undefined". This gets to where mathematicians use the "limits" concept as mentioned in a similar thread recently.

It is true that "the limit of 3/x as x approaches zero is equal to infinity". But 3/0 is definitely undefined. If you use infinity loosely as if it were a real number (e.g. multiplying or dividing both sides of an equation by infinity), you can easily prove that 1=2.

Steve

[G Gabriel]

Re: One more Trivia... not really.

Didn't I say I am in a bit of hurry and didn't want to get into these debates?

OK.. if you want to call it undefined, so be it. I am aware of those math professors and their arguments, mind you they are the same ones who did argue that the correct answer is infinity. Some of those professors will also argue that one infinity is larger than another infinity and have "reason" to believe that! That's just when someone gets lost in the forest!

To me that's just pure stupidity. What is lost in this debate is the fact that they apply finite logic to infinity.

I never said I would treat infinity as a number, that goes against what I just said.