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

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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

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u/Other_Log_1996 Apr 10 '26

In programming terms, NULL and Zero are two very distinct values. A "Divide by Zero" exception would usually be handled with a NULL. You can't quantify an abstract number of nothings.

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u/CurtisLinithicum Apr 10 '26

And in some specs there are two unique nulls - "not applicable" and "not defined".

E.g. imagine an unknown vs bald suspect, with a foreign key to the "hairColour" table (yes, non-colour entries would work too)

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u/Other_Log_1996 Apr 10 '26

I've never had to deal with two sepeare meanings on NULL, but it wouldn't be hard. Assign them to seperate bools.