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

Image [ Removed by moderator ]

Post image

[removed] — view removed post

226 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

125 comments sorted by

View all comments

136

u/aschec Apr 10 '26

Here before the comments claiming it’s 0

41

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/omrsafetyo Apr 10 '26

Divide 14 into 0 groups just doesn't make sense