Dividing by infinity

[BigMoosie]

I cannot believe that http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=11607 was closed! I just read it and was enjoying the discussion and was going to contribute to it until I noticed it being shut by (presumabley) dave. This is an outrage! I cannot see which rule was being violated. I am new here and was enjoying this place until I saw the brutality under which these mods enforce their powers! Dave just because you do not find something interesting doesnt mean it should not be discussed. Please dont close this thread.

 

Ok now onto the discussion. If zero was the reciprocal of infinity then zero would be the reciprocal of negative infinity also which is ridiculous, by definition it cannot have two reciprocals. I see it that if and only if it is being left as x/infinity to be zero but to preserve sence for further manipulation it cannot be simplified.

[matt grime]

I will make a sild surmise. It was closed, as a lot of those kinds of threads are, because they it was useless. They are not mathematical irrespective of what people may think about them, and any and all questions in them are already answered everywhere else. The only answer a question such as "why can't I divide by infinity" deserves is to have the simple standards of mathematics explained to them. Rules about rings, operations and so on. There is nothing mystical or magical or new to be said about the subject.

 

Mathematics essentially boils down to what we may deduce from some hypotheses based upon some pre-agreed set of axioms using a certain kind of logic. These types of questions all fail to meet the simple prerequisite of understanding that. I think that is almost entirely down to people assigning far more meaning to mathematics than it needs. No one would question why you cannot invert a matrix if its determinant is zero, but for some reason the mysticism of infinity attracts odd debate.

[Dave]

FYI, it was actually Phi that closed the thread, not me. Although I'll admit that it would have been closed if I'd got there before him.

 

As matt pointed out, the entire 0/0, 1/infinity, etc arguments have been said on here at least 5+ times before. I don't feel that there is a need to continually go on and continually explain why dividing by infinity doesn't make any sense at all. Let me give a brief summary of what one of those threads is like:

 

Post 1: Why can't I divide by infinity?

Post 2: Infinity isn't defined.

Post 3: But if I have infinite apples...

Post 4: Infinity isn't defined.

Post 5: But...

 

and soforth. I don't mean to be condescending, but this is the way that most of the posts on the matter turn out to be. Whilst I respect that the entire idea of infinity has rather a mystical feel to it, as you progress through mathematics it becomes quite the opposite. Once you get used to working with infinite sets and the like on a day-to-day basis, it becomes a bit dull

 

And to be quite honest I find a lot of the subjects discussed on the maths forum and others quite dull, but I can recognise that people find it interesting to discuss. However, the fact of the matter is that this particular topic has been done to a death on these boards, hence the thread is closed.

[MathsIsFun]

Good on ya, BigMoosie! We WERE having fun. I was looking forward to the next installment, and then it got closed.

 

I think that playing with the concept of infinity is part of being human. Just because some of you may be tired with it, doesn't mean others are.

 

By discussing and sharing ideas, we grow and learn, and who knows, someone may achieve an important insight here.

[Phi for All]

This is an outrage! I cannot see which rule was being violated. I am new here and was enjoying this place until I saw the brutality under which these mods enforce their powers!

We ARE heavily moderated here at SFN. We are not like many science boards who allow a lot of junk and clutter. Our members prefer it when we clean up the crap so their limited reading time is not wasted. This will not change. And when I get posts reported to me as being unproductive by several people, I close them.

By discussing and sharing ideas' date=' we grow and learn, and who knows, someone may achieve an important insight here.[/quote']Absolutely, and I hope you will trust in the judgements of our Administrators, Moderators and Resident Experts to know when to do our jobs.

[BigMoosie]

OK, I totally understand, but in future I suggest that before closing the thread you provide several links to other threads or resources about the matter.

 

You can shut this down if you want too

[Phi for All]

OK, I totally understand, but in future I suggest that before closing the thread you provide several links to other threads or resources about the matter.

You're a big moosie now, you should be able to use the Search function that's available for the entire forum, each sub-forum and each thread. It even highlights your search words in red for easy recognition.

 

Or you can Google resources your damn self.

[matt grime]

Does it not say, in the introductory threads, that you should search the forums before posting a question as the chances are it's been asked before and answered?

[the tree]

Does it not say, in the introductory threads, that you should search the forums before posting a question as the chances are it's been asked before and answered?

Oh so many forums say that, and unfourtunately it tends not to get followed.

Infinity is a damn cool number, but I can see why the conversation goes nowhere and is pretty pointless.

 

Although you can divide by infinity: [math]{\infty}/{x}={\infty}[/math] but that's about as far as it goes so I agree that said thread should have been closed.

[BigMoosie]

By dividing by infinity I think it is generally meant that we are saying [math]{x}/{\infty}[/math] and not [math]{\infty}/{x}[/math].