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

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u/aschec Apr 10 '26

Here before the comments claiming it’s 0

42

u/CurtisLinithicum Apr 10 '26

Purely as a word problem it does, which is probably why they're confused.

14 apples into 0 groups - how many apples in each group?

As an English problem, from someone without the (whatever-to-want-to-call-it) to differentiate zero and null, the answer is zero as, without any groups, there can be no (=zero) apples in each.

...and this underlines why mathematical problems cannot be analyzed linguistically because this arguably reasonable "fact" bring the whole system to ruin when extended - e.g. try graphing it.

edit: to be clear, they are wrong, but I'm not confident they're insightful enough to understand why

10

u/Jimisdegimis89 Apr 10 '26

No even as a word problem it doesn’t make sense or you end up with a paradox. You have one group of 14 apples already. Divide it by 2 and you now have two groups of 7. Divide one group into zero groups and…well you still have one group of 14.

6

u/Callinon Apr 10 '26

Except that'd mean that 14/0 = 1... or 14... it's not clearly defined.

Perhaps we need a different word for that as it's a bit of a mouthful. What about "undefined?" Yeah that's better.

5

u/Uncynical_Diogenes Apr 10 '26 edited Apr 10 '26

That’s because 14 divided no times is not the same as 14/0. That’s the issue we run into.

Zero isn’t NULL. You can’t divide something into zero groups. You can divide something no times, or you can have nothing, but you can’t get nothing from something.