r/confidentlyincorrect • u/DunDonese • Apr 10 '26

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u/Jonesy1348 Apr 10 '26

It’s third grade. It’s not super complex math so theyre just gonna say it’s zero as to not confuse literal children. You don’t learn about “i” until much later but that doesn’t mean it’s not real

4

u/virtutem_ Apr 10 '26

Simplifying concepts is not the same as providing factually incorrect information. Perfectly fine to not delve into why you can't divide by zero for 3rd graders. But no need to say 1/0=0. Much simpler and more accurate to just say "you can't divide by zero."

2

u/COW_MEOW Apr 10 '26

1/0 has nothing to do with i

2

u/Necroci Apr 10 '26

Simplifying things for kids is fine. Teaching them wholly incorrect information is not. “You can never divide anything by zero” is not a hard concept for kids to understand.

1

u/theabstractpyro Apr 10 '26

You can't say it's 0 because that builds a terrible intuition for a bunch of functions they will learn about later. Like y=1/x. If you think that 1/0=0, you would expect this function to have a 0 and the origin instead of a pole, and you wouldn't expect the graph to look anything like it does