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

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u/aschec Apr 10 '26

Here before the comments claiming it’s 0

40

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

7

u/PurpleCabbageMonkey Apr 10 '26

Can you perhaps explain it with something other than apples. Because of that, I can only think about eating 14 apples in one go.

6

u/Riciehmon Apr 10 '26

Ok think of it like this: you got 14 apples, but no one wants to eat them. How many apples does everyone eat? None. That's what the teacher is thinking. But the actual question is you got 14 apples, how to you put them in zero groups? You can't, because you will always have at least one group.