Don't take it to seriouslly either, it's just something I felt wasn't right - nothing more.
What they teach us:
multiplying any number by 0, you get 0
dividing any number by 0, is forbidden - or in floating point numbers is indicated as not a number
In my optics this is totally wrong, why? Because IMHO it's against natural laws. let's make a little example:
Imagine your walking a street somewhere in the far future. Suddenlly you come across something called 'The multiplicator'! Like you can imagine and thanks to quantum physics this 'thing' can take any opject and multiplicate (replicate) it.
So you grab a apple from out of your pocket and put it into the machine, you want to press the '2' on the keypad but you slip and press the '0' followed by 'enter'. The machine start making all those strange noises and funny lights and then suddenlly: ... the apple is gone!!!
My point is, you then would have been scammed - because we all know that you cannot make things 'disappear'.
20 years ago it once again hit my attention when I had my first c64 computer. Back then you turned on a computer and the only thing you had was a blinking cursor behind the word 'ready'.
The first thing you can do is use it as a calculator, and that's what I did. Finally I could have the answer to my problem! So I typed my pseudo mythical combination 2000 x 0= and pressed 'enter'...
Guess what? I never got my answer because it looked like the computer was gone with vacation. The blinking cursor was gone!
And up to the present day they have problems with computers performing a division by zero and crashing.
In floating point they call it 'not a number' and blame it on quantum physics - computers are then programmed to ignore any division by zero in calculations in order to prevent the computer from crashing.
And I can believe they will do the same for the multiplication by zero (for even my c64 couldn't take it).
What does it all boils down to?
Well, first it's easy to see that some mathematical property are giving a hard time to computer programmers. While meanwhile 'mathematicians' are keeping their head stiff, pretending there's no problem at all.
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Well, there is a bit of a problem, I think. The problem with division or multiplication by zero.
Dividing by any number, x, means that there exists an inverse 1/x so that for any number, x (1/x) =1. Dividing by 0 would mean that we would have to work with 1/0.
We know that 0(x) = 0 for any x, so: 0 (1/0) = 0. However, at the same time ... 0 (1/0) = 1, because x (1/x) = 1.
Therefore, 0 = 1.
A world in which multiplication and division by 0 could be admitted would then become a world in which 0 took the place of all numbers, and therefore would cease to exist. Nothing only equals nothing; nothing cannot equal something.*
*Except within the walls of the United States Congress, where any number can equal any other number, and nothing can and usually does equal something. This is known as the Washington Anomaly.
The key to resolving this apparent paradox is to understand that x = any number, but zero is not a number, but simply an indicator of an order of magnitude--a numerical 'punctuation mark.' It is no more a number than a period (.) is a letter. The human brain, with its capacity for lateral thinking, can distinguish the contradiction, because it is intelligent. It can understand the concept of nothingness. However, a computer cannot because computers are programmed to work only with things--with numbers. Zero is not a number. It is the absence of number.
In the case of your 'Multiplicator,' if you put the apple in and accidentally pressed zero, the apple wouldn't disappear. The machine would register an error because it can only provide quantity, and zero is not quanity. It would be like asking it to multiply blueness, or a lawyer's sense of ethics.
That is my take on it.
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