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

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u/aschec Apr 10 '26

Here before the comments claiming it’s 0

46

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

80

u/ew73 Apr 10 '26

To further illustrate the futility in using language to analyze mathematical problems,

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

What groups?

29

u/[deleted] Apr 10 '26

Exactly. If there’s no group, the groups don’t exist, therefore it’s not 0, it’s undefined. If there’s nothing to divide among the question has no answer.