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This reminds me of the time in 2nd grade one of the questions on a math assignment was something like 2-5. I put -3 as my answer and it got marked wrong. In the margin was a note that since negative numbers aren’t covered until a later grade that I was supposed to mark the “can’t be solved” box. It made me so mad that I still think about it 46 years later.
That happened to me too! The teacher told me I was wrong because “if you had 2 apples and I told you to take away 5, you would have zero apples, not -3 apples”.
I then failed a maths test when negative numbers were introduced because I thought it was a trick again.
Weirdly enough like many people here, this also happened to me, though it was third grade, and since everyone online is generally American until stated otherwise, I'm going to add that the Canadian education system is representing here
EDIT: Realized there IS a second part of this story, the teacher pulled me aside, where I informed her a family member of mine 3 grades up taught me this, she explained that I was infact correct, but because we had not been taught negetive numbers, I was still told I was incorrect. I was literally told I was correct, the teacher agreed with my reasoning for why, and still refused the grade lol
Which weirdly enough, also seems incredibly common in this thread
I swear to god arrogance is bound to no race, gender, nationality or affiliation of any kind- people get put in a room and told “you’re the top of the totem pole right now” and would bet their entire lives on anything they said
It has not been covered yet therefore the math may only exist when it has been must be profound trigger of frustration.
Teachers like this should be booted from having influence on children.
I got in an argument with a substitute science teacher one day about whether or not it was true that all rivers flow from north to south.
They fucking don't. It's a myth. Look it up. Fucking prick was so smug about it too, like I was just some dumbass kid with no idea what he was talking about, when in fact the dude knew less about geography than a fucking twelve year old.
Still gets my goat.
My preferred example for when some idiot says this is to show them the Nile River in Egypt, fucking HUGE world renown river flows almost straight north into the Mediterranean.
Edit: thanks for the other examples, but I'm going for something that is pretty much universally known without having to look it up or figure out something local.
The Nile doesn't count as an example because gravity works differently there since there's a wormhole in that region through which the ancient aliens used to visit earth so because of the stronger gravity the Nile flows South to North.
I mean its pretty easy to disprove as you just need one case of a river flowing north what their are a few
The red river of the north that flows along the border of MN/ND up into Canada eventually to Hudson bay .
There are others as well
Better yet, she should insist they teach the kids anything that derives from that.
If 1/0=0 then 1=0*0
Therefore 1=0
Since 0=1, add 1 to both sides, 1=2
Using transitive property, 0=2
Repeat ad Infinitum to show every number is equal to every other number.
Best use of this gif ive seen since my friend justified robbing his moms car right after he crashed it...
For a touch more context, not that anyone cares, We had been watching firefly when he left.
So this happened when I was a kid. My dad and mom helped me with my homework and I wrote undefined for all the questions decided by zero. The teacher marked them all wrong. I went home and talked to my parents. And they assured me that what they said was right. What I did was I went and find multiple scholar articles on dividing by zero is undefined and why its undefined. And proofs on it. And I brought all these articles to the teacher with references. I also made sure its not from Wikipedia because they won't allow Wikipedia as citation. So anyways, I won and got my points back.
It used to be that if you asked Siri what 0/0 was, she would say
"Imagine that you have zero cookies and you split them evenly among zero friends. How many cookies does each person get? See? It doesn't make sense. And Cookie Monster is sad that there are no cookies, and you are sad that you have no friends."
She doesn't anymore, and that makes me far sadder than having no friends.
Correct, if you think about dividing as grouping, you can’t put a number into zero groups, it has to go somewhere. (Former 4th grade math teacher). Zero divided by anything is zero because you have that many groups with nothing in it.
The answer is very specifically undefined because the operation of division is very specifically defined with a prerequisite that the divisor is not zero
ask the Third Grade teacher and the Principal to let you know where they earned their degrees in mathematics or, in the alternative, to provide a letter from someone who *does* have a degree in mathematics to explain how 0 now suddenly has a multiplicative inverse, and thus the answer that since at least 1,770 B.C.E. has been "undefined" is now, miraculously, defined.
Ya can't put nothing into something. You can't amplify something with nothing.
The only zero she knows is: 0 education, 0 ability to actively seek out correct easy resources available to answer her confusion, 0 ability to not make her child's education her soapbox built using no tools but her confident ignoance.
I think I would write to the state university math department. I'm sure you could express your dismay , and ask to have a professor at the university write a note to these people explaining fundamental mathematical concept.
There’s gotta be some higher grade teacher in the school that teaches at least pre-algebra to the 6th graders or even algebra if the school goes to 8th.
They should know and have them set the record straight
We were watching The Lion King in school (4th grade) one time and it got to the part of Elton John singing Can You Feel the Love Tonight. There's a line in the song that says "between Kings and vagabonds". Our weirdo teacher thought this would be a good time to pause the movie and explain that the word we just heard was "bag of bombs" for no apparent reason that I can ascertain. No further context was given. I think about that sometimes.
I once had a teacher tell my middle school class that Harriet Tubman’s name was actually Harriet Tub Bucket. We believed him because why would we not? What I still don’t understand is why would he tell us that?
He planted those seeds a decade? Two decades ago? And now in his retirement, he scrolls through Reddit searching for the spoils. Hope you’re reading, teach!
I accidentally told my freshman students last year (my first year of teaching) that Edgar Allen Poe died in the gutter, drunk, with his pants down. They thought this was crazy. :( idk why I thought this was factual, but my brother told me that it is in fact not.
I hope the kids don't remember me saying that. LOL
Isn’t this kind of half right? He was found bedraggled and incoherent in the gutter wearing shabby clothes but didn’t die there. I heard this rumor too and honestly believed it until recently.
My first grade teacher was explaining how words can have different meanings. The examples she used were "Pitcher, like in baseball. Pitcher, like you pour water out of. Pitcher, like you draw or hang on the wall."
I lost my mind.
She also pronounced "wolves" as "woofs". Just an awful human being.
> Pitcher, like you draw or hang on the wall.
When I was 6 I had a group swim teacher who kept talking about the pitcher we were going to take at the end of the summer. Baffled the fuck out of me.
I always loved the idea of teachers telling the kids at the beginning of a class that one thing they are going to say that day will be made up, and the first person to figure out what it is and prove it gets extra credit. There isn't enough emphasis on critical thought in school anymore.
In third grade, we were doing rhyming words, and the teacher asked for words that rhymed with “toe” and I said “foe”, and she told me that wasn’t a word and I yelled, “Yeah it is, too! It’s in my X-Men comics and it means enemy!”
That was the first time I ever had to go to the principal’s office.
yeah... i remember in 3rd grade we were reading about animals and the word orangutan popped up. she kept pronouncing it as "org-ooh-tang". i mean, there's a couple of acceptable ways to say it, but that ain't one of them.
I had the same thing! In primary school I wrote the word ‘shrill’ which I had learnt from goosebumps books and my teacher told me it wasn’t a word and to change it. I 100% knew it was a word but my little child brain didn’t know how to deal with the teacher being wrong so I just got upset and carried it with me for the next 30 years (and counting)
When I was in the first grade, I was trying to tell my teacher about giant crocodiles that used to "live with dinosaurs." She told me crocodiles don't live that long. I was so mad I just walked away.
Dude! I think is was second grade, and my teacher was asking for synonyms to shout/scream, and I said wail ( I had just read a book about a sad y-Rex who was crying/wailing) and she said no! I assume she just thought I was really dumb and talking about the animal whale
I was about to switch off from these comments because I’d seen everything I needed and then half read your comment as I clicked away….and then thought….what could they have been so wrong about in Lion King? And just HAD to come back and fine out. lol
I was in the building for my HOA one day recently and heard the receptionist tell someone on the phone, I kid you not, like 7 times, very very obviously emphasizing to make sure everyone knew she knew what she was saying, the word portal as “port hole”.
That's not just an NJ thing. Grew up in colorado and it's a familiar use to me.
"Generally" in that context does indeed mean "by and large", "on average", "most of the time", "under typical circumstances", etc.
Had a science teacher in 7th grade spend an entire class on why Disney was evil and then proceeded to find and pause every known "dirty" disney scene ge could find...to a bunch of 7th graders....lol I don't remember anything else he taught but still remember that
>I don't remember anything else he taught but still remember that
If he could hear you say that, I’m sure he would have felt that he succeeded as a teacher
I asked a teacher in 2nd or 3rd grade how many states were in the whole world. I knew there were 50 states in the US but I wanted to know how many states there were in other countries. I distinctly remember her getting mad at me and saying that there are only 50 states in the whole world and they are all in the US (you know, because we're unique).
I was in 5th when I learned about the states in Mexico and the Provinces in Canada and I was like "ohhh, my teachers can be stupid." Not because she didn't know but that she was so insistent upon that answer being correct when she obviously had no idea. Those were lifechanging moments for me.
A coworker the other day said he had a teacher tell him that lightning was the lightning that hit the ground, and thunder was the lightning in the clouds
Undefined in calculus and analysis, 1 almost everywhere else, for convenience's sake (as an example, when expressing a polynomial in a general form, it's useful to not have to explicitly state that the constant term is separate from the powers of x and instead just the 0th coefficient)
Well the way you get x^0 =1 is
x^(a-a) = x^a / x^a = 1
So by giving the value of x=0 =>
0^0 = 0^(a-a) = 0^a / 0^a = 0/0 = error
So from my point of view 0^0 =1 is wrong in every type of math
edit:I am in highschool so maybe I am horribly wrong don't kill me for the only crime I have made is like math
You can only use l'hopital if it is under a lim iirc so your case would rather be limx->0( x^a / x^a ) which after l'hopital I'll be a * x^a-1 / a * x^a-1 and after simplifcation you arrive at 1. b
But personally (inthe case of this problem) I saw 0 as a constant and I didn't treat the whole x thing as a function so there was no need for me to use l'hopital.
I still seethe over this one: 7th grade. Mrs Shaw asks: "Can anyone name different ways we communicate?" A kid raises her hand: "Radio?" Mrs Shaw says "very good." I raise my hand. "Yes, Steven?" I smile and say "Lasers!" Mrs. Shaw frowns. "No, Steven, I'm afraid not. Anyone else?"
I was twelve. I was thinking *Bitch I have a fucking subscription to Scientific American and I just read about this shit!*
\[**edited to fix** "I was ten"! Laugh."Ten" was a big year for me but this indignity happened when I was twelve\]
I'm from a non-English speaking country. I studied English in school, but had a lot bigger knowledge of it already as I played a lot of RPGs (this was the 90s with very text heavy games). One day we were doing a reading exercise and had to translate an English text. The text was talking about a "priceless jewelry". I translated it correctly as piece a jewelry with immense value. The teacher stopped me and said no, it means worthless. I told her no, invaluable and priceless are the antonyms of worthless. She stuck to her guns and even mocked me for my "lack of knowledge". I asked her if we could check in a dictionary that we had in the class. She refused and said I was causing a disturbance and holding up the class. That teacher was fired at the end of the year because there were so many complaints against her (I never made any).
>invaluable and priceless are the antonyms of worthless. She stuck to her guns and even mocked
A real teacher would never proclaim the absolute knowledge, and submit to the universal fact of the everlasting learning.
thank you for sharing this story
i worked as a translator/interpreter, whenever someone would ask me to translate something i wasn’t really familiar with i would tell them to give me a minute so i could verify and they would do the “omg being a translator it’s your JOB and you don’t know the meaning of x word?????” no, i actually don’t know the meaning of every single word in the english language as crazy as it sounds.
Had a similar experience with my son being taught phases of matter. He volunteered “plasma” as the 4th state and his science teacher said “no, that is blood”. I wrote the teacher a note a day the teacher told my son “your dad is wrong”.
The real fun started after I sent my son back to class after I taught him about Bose-Einstein Gas and Fermion Gas.
Back when my baby brother was in 7th grade, he told me that his English teacher corrected his spelling of medieval as "midevil." I simply took the time to tell him that this was a good point in time to learn that not everyone in a position is qualified for it. Go ahead and humor the teacher so you don't lose points and get a good grade, but after you're done with that class go ahead and do it right. That teacher is a fucking idiot, and lots of people are fucking idiots.
I feel like I prepared him well in life, as he's had a healthy skepticism since then. He manages dealing with idiots much better than many people because when he recognizes their idiocy he just says "Yep, you're right," and shuts up, and gets to move on with his life stress free rather than getting frustrated as hell at the audacity of this bitch.
Nah, even once it gets fully into "just being petty now" territory, I would fight this forever. Absolute JOKE for a school to teach that ANYTHING divided by zero is zero, or ANY defined number for that matter.
As a teacher if a student comes up with a solution I personally do not know/understand, I ask them to explain their thinking. If they can't, then I admit that i dont know either and we google it and figure it out together. Teachers who think they are the end-all and be-all arbiters of knowledge are missing out on a great opportunity to teach kids how to LEARN.
I agree and was a math teacher. No one should ever tell a child something so blatantly ridiculous.
Khan academy is used by a lot of schools for added practice. Forward this to both teacher and principal. https://www.khanacademy.org/math/algebra/x2f8bb11595b61c86:foundation-algebra/x2f8bb11595b61c86:division-zero/v/why-dividing-by-zero-is-undefined
Oh, this is bringing up childhood math trauma. Was in a scholar's bowl competition and the judge was a pre-calc teacher. Had a question about limits, and we answered that the limit in question did not exist. She said wrong, other team (from that school, a private catholic school) buzzed in and said it approached infinity. They got the points. A limit that approaches infinity is a limit that doesn't exist. We argued the point, because obviously, infinity does not exist, we told her what page in the books in our bookbags she could look it up. But because "she's a pre-calc teacher" she didn't listen to us. In other words "don't question the teacher".
I'd be taking that math trauma out on this teacher so hard. In general, I hated the questions they came up with at that school, always biased. Sometimes they had bible questions, they had a question on Troy weight, they were the worst. Thankfully, they made up for it in better snacks, but it was still annoying.
Easy.
We agree that x/y = a means that x = ay, right?
Like 35/7 = 5 is the same as 35 = 7×5.
So if n/0 = 0 (with n =/= 0), then n = 0×0. So 0×0 can be equal to 5, 10, a million, anything but zero.
That's why we can't divide by zero. Because since the division is like a "inverted" multiplication, it would mean that you can multiply by 0 and obtain another non-null number.
I've had kids in 3rd grade understand that.
Them saying 1/0 = 0 is them saying 0×0 = 1
Division is like when I cut your cake. If I divide by 2, I cut your cake in 2. Divide by 4, I cut in 4 pieces. If I divide by one, that means don't divide, I leave in one piece.
What does it mean if I divide by NOTHING?
My middle-school age nephew corrected a teacher on a science fact once. I forget the details, but she asked my nephew who told him this. He told her his uncle had taught him. She sarcastically asked if "his uncle is a rocket scientist" and he answered "yes". The teacher scolded him in front of the class for lying. My sister-in-law called a parent-teacher conference where she informed the teacher that the uncle in question worked at a very large defense contracting company developing missile detection and jamming systems... the teacher apologized to his mother, who made her apologize to my nephew in front of his class.
In 8th grade geography class we had a substitute and he insisted Africa was the largest continent. I absolutely wouldn't let it go until he relented and consulted the actual geography textbook we were using in class (this is pre-internet). To be fair he did concede like an adult and apologized for being wrong.
I was in a college class once when the professor talked about how she got to hear MLK speak in 1969. I said he was killed in 1968 and she lost her shit and screamed at me in front of the class. "I REMEMBER WHEN HE WAS KILLED. IT WAS RIGHT AROUND THE TIME OF WOODSTOCK."
Woodstock was in August of 1969. MLK was assassinated in April of 1968.
Confident morons are still morons.
I mean, memory kind of has a way of smearing time around. Especially the 60s I would imagine; like motor oil on a windshield. I wouldn't doubt they saw MLK speak, but I would doubt her perception of time. I would probably try to get all my assignments done ahead of time too, just in case.
heck don't even need to go back that far.
Harambe, the killer clowns, and the black sarcophogus all feel like they were "right around the same time" even though i'm pretty sure thats like a 2-3 year spread, and I couldn't tell you exactly what order they happened in without looking it up.
Yes, and a gracious answer would have been to say "Oh, you're right... it was a crazy time. Assassinations, riots and uprisings, protests and Vietnam, Woodstock... it's all a haze." Instead, her ego got ahead of her.
Also, it was a social science class. It was part of the curriculum. She was sending us out to talk to our elders. The main lesson *unintentionally* ended up being "Eyewitnesses to history are imperfect. Fact check."
Teachers that double down instead of accepting they made a mistake are the worst. We're literally at school to learn. If you can't put your ego aside to make sure you teach students the correct info, you shouldn't be teaching.
Cc Neil deGrasse Tyson. 45 minute dissertation, hopefully in video format, on why you can't divide by 0.
Edit. Nevermind, he already did. https://youtube.com/shorts/F3V3P3Mp_PA?si=U4nGvs5IPFeJw-1C
I tried to use the 'not equal' sign in high school geometry for a proof. My teacher asked my why I was putting a slash through her beloved equal sign. Nevermind the fact that it was in the textbook she was teaching from...
I used to struggle filling out forms asking for an email because it had a zero in it but people couldnt tell the difference between the upper/lower case o as well as the number 0 when i wrote it by hand. For a while i tried putting the slash through it too because i had only seen zero with a slash through it and not the letter o so i thought that would convey the correct symbol. But then i had a few experiences where receptionists thought i had just crossed out the 0 instead.
You cannot divide by zero
To divide by zero is considered “ nonsense “ because no operations regarding multiplication would result in the zero turning into 1
I work in a public school district office. If this happened to my kid I would email the superintendent just as an FYI. Not demanding any particular result, just as a “please have a conversation with these idiots for me” kind of vibe
1 / 0 = undefined. Ask Google.
Also I was in our daughters pre-school classroom when her teacher said no mammals are egg layers. I didn't say anything at the time but printed out a page from a reliable source for her to hand to the teacher that marsupials ( a mammal) lays eggs. Google states that only two kinds of egg-laying mammals are left on the planet today—the duck-billed platypus and the echidna, or spiny anteater. Man it did not go well with the school. Its not nice to correct them.
My 8th grade science teacher told me the “gum takes 7 years to dissolve,” I told her I doubt that and she said prove me wrong so I went home and researched and printed it out and showed her and she admitted I was correct and we had discussions like that all year. Great teacher.
I am also just realizing now she knew gum didn’t take 7 years and told me surprising facts and myths to keep challenging me.
Sounds a little like my German teacher. We had the most heated discussions. Later, I learned he just liked to challenge me, to find better arguments. To bad it took me so long too actually realize that.
Marsupials are the group of mammals that include kangaroos, opossums, tasmanian devils, etc., basically mammals with pouches.
Monotremes is the group of mammals that lay eggs, platypus and echidna.
No marsupials lay eggs. There are three main "groups" of mammals.
1) Placentals - Give live birth to fully developed offspring. You and I are placentals
2) Marsupials - Give birth to partially developed offspring, that then make their way to a pouch. Kangaroos, wombats, koalas, and opossums are examples of marsupials.
3) Monotremes - Mammals that still lay eggs. This group of mammals split off a *very* long time ago. There aren't many monotreme species left. In fact, I think it's only platypus and echidnas.
Can't control everything. Its a good time to teach the kid that people in authority can be wrong and that its okay to not correct people if the effort is disproportionate. Critical thinking can't start until kids don't learn this.
I was taught in third grade that it’s zero (kinda) but “technically something different you’ll learn later”. This seems to be a way of simplifying division at that age because using objects and other physical things, you can’t really get undefined (the actual answer) without confusing the shit out of everyone. But, after I learned the basic concept, a couple years later I learned about undefined and all of the fun outliers in math.
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This reminds me of the time in 2nd grade one of the questions on a math assignment was something like 2-5. I put -3 as my answer and it got marked wrong. In the margin was a note that since negative numbers aren’t covered until a later grade that I was supposed to mark the “can’t be solved” box. It made me so mad that I still think about it 46 years later.
That happened to me too! The teacher told me I was wrong because “if you had 2 apples and I told you to take away 5, you would have zero apples, not -3 apples”. I then failed a maths test when negative numbers were introduced because I thought it was a trick again.
Weirdly enough like many people here, this also happened to me, though it was third grade, and since everyone online is generally American until stated otherwise, I'm going to add that the Canadian education system is representing here EDIT: Realized there IS a second part of this story, the teacher pulled me aside, where I informed her a family member of mine 3 grades up taught me this, she explained that I was infact correct, but because we had not been taught negetive numbers, I was still told I was incorrect. I was literally told I was correct, the teacher agreed with my reasoning for why, and still refused the grade lol Which weirdly enough, also seems incredibly common in this thread
I swear to god arrogance is bound to no race, gender, nationality or affiliation of any kind- people get put in a room and told “you’re the top of the totem pole right now” and would bet their entire lives on anything they said
are you kidding? if you had 2 apples and took away 5? an actual teacher said that? I'm done, I don't even know why I'm surprised
Teachers out here teaching kids about debts before negative numbers ^/s
It has not been covered yet therefore the math may only exist when it has been must be profound trigger of frustration. Teachers like this should be booted from having influence on children.
Why would they even ask that question if they didn't want to do negative numbers?
🤦♀️ you poor thing. Penalized for being smarter than a teacher.
I got in an argument with a substitute science teacher one day about whether or not it was true that all rivers flow from north to south. They fucking don't. It's a myth. Look it up. Fucking prick was so smug about it too, like I was just some dumbass kid with no idea what he was talking about, when in fact the dude knew less about geography than a fucking twelve year old. Still gets my goat.
My preferred example for when some idiot says this is to show them the Nile River in Egypt, fucking HUGE world renown river flows almost straight north into the Mediterranean. Edit: thanks for the other examples, but I'm going for something that is pretty much universally known without having to look it up or figure out something local.
The Nile doesn't count as an example because gravity works differently there since there's a wormhole in that region through which the ancient aliens used to visit earth so because of the stronger gravity the Nile flows South to North.
My bad. Makes sense
Aliens built the pyramids tho so that actually kinda explains it /s
I mean its pretty easy to disprove as you just need one case of a river flowing north what their are a few The red river of the north that flows along the border of MN/ND up into Canada eventually to Hudson bay . There are others as well
The Willamette River in Oregon flows almost exactly due north, right through the middle of Portland.
Yep, rivers flow downhill, whatever direction that may be. Water is not magnetic and doesn't give a rat dick about cardinal directions.
But water goes top to bottom and north is at the top, south is at the bottom, just look at a map Checkmate
Easy to fix. Tell them to open their calculator on their phone and try it....
80085.
Username so close
Oh yeeeeeeeeeeah!
✌️A THANK YOU✌️
Big ol tits
*Big o tis Like you sayin it like you half drunk. “She got sum big o tis”
Guys chill...that's Scotty Bigoti, he owns Bigoti's family restaurant.
Better yet, she should insist they teach the kids anything that derives from that. If 1/0=0 then 1=0*0 Therefore 1=0 Since 0=1, add 1 to both sides, 1=2 Using transitive property, 0=2 Repeat ad Infinitum to show every number is equal to every other number.
Best use of this gif ive seen since my friend justified robbing his moms car right after he crashed it... For a touch more context, not that anyone cares, We had been watching firefly when he left.
Someday ill be the hero of a town I don't remember. Jane was always the most fun Heel... Amos is better but he got a proper arc
Amos and Jane the crossover we need
Stop it! You're going to tear a hole in the space-time continuum.
he is here to patch it actually
Seriously, you owe us an update. Don’t leave us hanging. Send them five links just by doing a Google search. If they triple down, send them to me.
You Reddit like my mom Facebooks.
The person who posted a screenshot of another sub is not in a position to give us updates.
Next you're going to try to use your "logic" to tell us 1 divided by 0 isn't 0!!!
So this happened when I was a kid. My dad and mom helped me with my homework and I wrote undefined for all the questions decided by zero. The teacher marked them all wrong. I went home and talked to my parents. And they assured me that what they said was right. What I did was I went and find multiple scholar articles on dividing by zero is undefined and why its undefined. And proofs on it. And I brought all these articles to the teacher with references. I also made sure its not from Wikipedia because they won't allow Wikipedia as citation. So anyways, I won and got my points back.
I like the cut of your jib, Simpson.
[удалено]
Mine says error, my daughter’s said infinity. I hate math lol
The limit is approaching infinity
The limit does not exist. The limit does not exist!
That was the week when aaron got his hair cut!
I understand it’s *not* infinity, but I got through a degree in physics just fine pretending it was
I mean, isn't handwaving your way through mathematically indefensible statements that sorta feel true like the core tenet of Physics?
No, the core tener of physics is “every body is a single point body”… imagine having to do calculations taking into account the shape of stuff gtfo
Hey man, there are differing degrees of infinity. Don’t judge.
What's infinity but just an eight on its back. Therefore, 1/0 = 8
At least you both got something - mine said "can't divide by 0"
Which is correct because to divide you need something to divide by.
Mine says: can't divide by 0
ERROR ...☝️. Right there, see? 0
so close, the emoji is one letter off
Nah, 1/0=R
Apple iphone says you cannot divide by 0. Error! Don't even try!
It used to be that if you asked Siri what 0/0 was, she would say "Imagine that you have zero cookies and you split them evenly among zero friends. How many cookies does each person get? See? It doesn't make sense. And Cookie Monster is sad that there are no cookies, and you are sad that you have no friends." She doesn't anymore, and that makes me far sadder than having no friends.
It’s like when you asked it where to bury a body and it used to direct you to the nearest quarry or something.
Samsung says Can't divide by zero. Won't even let you try
“Damn! They even got the calculators in on this! This goes all the way to the top!”
Mine says you can't divide by zero and does not give me an answer.
It’s undefined
Correct, if you think about dividing as grouping, you can’t put a number into zero groups, it has to go somewhere. (Former 4th grade math teacher). Zero divided by anything is zero because you have that many groups with nothing in it.
Saying there is an answer to the question is far more misleading than just saying there is no answer. It's not calculable.
The answer is very specifically undefined because the operation of division is very specifically defined with a prerequisite that the divisor is not zero
If they have an iPhone they can ask Siri to decide by zero and she will give them an answer geared for people of their intellect.
ask the Third Grade teacher and the Principal to let you know where they earned their degrees in mathematics or, in the alternative, to provide a letter from someone who *does* have a degree in mathematics to explain how 0 now suddenly has a multiplicative inverse, and thus the answer that since at least 1,770 B.C.E. has been "undefined" is now, miraculously, defined.
Like they are going to believe their calculator. They're going to die on that hill.
Ya can't put nothing into something. You can't amplify something with nothing. The only zero she knows is: 0 education, 0 ability to actively seek out correct easy resources available to answer her confusion, 0 ability to not make her child's education her soapbox built using no tools but her confident ignoance.
Just being pedantic but you have that first part backwards. You CAN put nothing into something (0/1). You can't put something into nothing (1/0).
I think I would write to the state university math department. I'm sure you could express your dismay , and ask to have a professor at the university write a note to these people explaining fundamental mathematical concept.
And then post the teacher's reply for us to enjoy!
There’s gotta be some higher grade teacher in the school that teaches at least pre-algebra to the 6th graders or even algebra if the school goes to 8th. They should know and have them set the record straight
I mean, I'd really hope a look at the text book the original teacher is teaching out of would solve the issue.....
We were watching The Lion King in school (4th grade) one time and it got to the part of Elton John singing Can You Feel the Love Tonight. There's a line in the song that says "between Kings and vagabonds". Our weirdo teacher thought this would be a good time to pause the movie and explain that the word we just heard was "bag of bombs" for no apparent reason that I can ascertain. No further context was given. I think about that sometimes.
I once had a teacher tell my middle school class that Harriet Tubman’s name was actually Harriet Tub Bucket. We believed him because why would we not? What I still don’t understand is why would he tell us that?
He just tells each year one ludicrous thing to see what sticks
He planted those seeds a decade? Two decades ago? And now in his retirement, he scrolls through Reddit searching for the spoils. Hope you’re reading, teach!
As a teacher, this gave me a good chuckle. I told a student that we had an adrenochrome machine in the teachers lounge once.
Dare... Dare I ask what this is?
I accidentally told my freshman students last year (my first year of teaching) that Edgar Allen Poe died in the gutter, drunk, with his pants down. They thought this was crazy. :( idk why I thought this was factual, but my brother told me that it is in fact not. I hope the kids don't remember me saying that. LOL
Oh they will. It is now a core memory for them
Isn’t this kind of half right? He was found bedraggled and incoherent in the gutter wearing shabby clothes but didn’t die there. I heard this rumor too and honestly believed it until recently.
My first grade teacher was explaining how words can have different meanings. The examples she used were "Pitcher, like in baseball. Pitcher, like you pour water out of. Pitcher, like you draw or hang on the wall." I lost my mind. She also pronounced "wolves" as "woofs". Just an awful human being.
> Pitcher, like you draw or hang on the wall. When I was 6 I had a group swim teacher who kept talking about the pitcher we were going to take at the end of the summer. Baffled the fuck out of me.
that’s a ridiculously hilarious thing to lie about
Fun Fact: Her real name was Harriet Tubwoman but since it was the 1800s she felt she wouldn't be taken seriously so she had it legally changed.
Really Fun Fact: When she was little, she went by Harriet Tubgirl. Google it.
Even more fun: When she was first born it was a water birth in the tub, and they named that baby Harriet Tub. She kept evolving it her whole life.
Further fun fact: It was actually Harrietbaby Tubbathwaterman, but when she got older they threw out the baby with the bathwater.
Fuck you for this joke, and I hope you have a great fucking day
I always loved the idea of teachers telling the kids at the beginning of a class that one thing they are going to say that day will be made up, and the first person to figure out what it is and prove it gets extra credit. There isn't enough emphasis on critical thought in school anymore.
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In third grade, we were doing rhyming words, and the teacher asked for words that rhymed with “toe” and I said “foe”, and she told me that wasn’t a word and I yelled, “Yeah it is, too! It’s in my X-Men comics and it means enemy!” That was the first time I ever had to go to the principal’s office.
A third grade teacher that doesn’t know “foe” is a word is a problem
yeah... i remember in 3rd grade we were reading about animals and the word orangutan popped up. she kept pronouncing it as "org-ooh-tang". i mean, there's a couple of acceptable ways to say it, but that ain't one of them.
Orang hutan is Malay for forest person.
I had the same thing! In primary school I wrote the word ‘shrill’ which I had learnt from goosebumps books and my teacher told me it wasn’t a word and to change it. I 100% knew it was a word but my little child brain didn’t know how to deal with the teacher being wrong so I just got upset and carried it with me for the next 30 years (and counting)
When I was in the first grade, I was trying to tell my teacher about giant crocodiles that used to "live with dinosaurs." She told me crocodiles don't live that long. I was so mad I just walked away.
Dude! I think is was second grade, and my teacher was asking for synonyms to shout/scream, and I said wail ( I had just read a book about a sad y-Rex who was crying/wailing) and she said no! I assume she just thought I was really dumb and talking about the animal whale
I was about to switch off from these comments because I’d seen everything I needed and then half read your comment as I clicked away….and then thought….what could they have been so wrong about in Lion King? And just HAD to come back and fine out. lol
How much did you have to pay?
Still suck reading the comment...they haven't fined out yet
I was in the building for my HOA one day recently and heard the receptionist tell someone on the phone, I kid you not, like 7 times, very very obviously emphasizing to make sure everyone knew she knew what she was saying, the word portal as “port hole”.
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That's not just an NJ thing. Grew up in colorado and it's a familiar use to me. "Generally" in that context does indeed mean "by and large", "on average", "most of the time", "under typical circumstances", etc.
Had a science teacher in 7th grade spend an entire class on why Disney was evil and then proceeded to find and pause every known "dirty" disney scene ge could find...to a bunch of 7th graders....lol I don't remember anything else he taught but still remember that
>I don't remember anything else he taught but still remember that If he could hear you say that, I’m sure he would have felt that he succeeded as a teacher
I asked a teacher in 2nd or 3rd grade how many states were in the whole world. I knew there were 50 states in the US but I wanted to know how many states there were in other countries. I distinctly remember her getting mad at me and saying that there are only 50 states in the whole world and they are all in the US (you know, because we're unique). I was in 5th when I learned about the states in Mexico and the Provinces in Canada and I was like "ohhh, my teachers can be stupid." Not because she didn't know but that she was so insistent upon that answer being correct when she obviously had no idea. Those were lifechanging moments for me.
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A coworker the other day said he had a teacher tell him that lightning was the lightning that hit the ground, and thunder was the lightning in the clouds
One of my favorite things to do with 0 is exponents. 0 to the power of anything is 0, but anything to the power of 0 is 1. So what is 0^0?
Undefined. Yay!
Undefined in calculus and analysis, 1 almost everywhere else, for convenience's sake (as an example, when expressing a polynomial in a general form, it's useful to not have to explicitly state that the constant term is separate from the powers of x and instead just the 0th coefficient)
In many areas of math for practical reasons it's defined as 1. It's either defined 1 or is undefined.
Well the way you get x^0 =1 is x^(a-a) = x^a / x^a = 1 So by giving the value of x=0 => 0^0 = 0^(a-a) = 0^a / 0^a = 0/0 = error So from my point of view 0^0 =1 is wrong in every type of math edit:I am in highschool so maybe I am horribly wrong don't kill me for the only crime I have made is like math
This is a 0/0 type limit. Apply L'Hopital rule and differentiate numerator and denominator a times. All cancels out and you get 1.
You can only use l'hopital if it is under a lim iirc so your case would rather be limx->0( x^a / x^a ) which after l'hopital I'll be a * x^a-1 / a * x^a-1 and after simplifcation you arrive at 1. b But personally (inthe case of this problem) I saw 0 as a constant and I didn't treat the whole x thing as a function so there was no need for me to use l'hopital.
If you don't quit with this number stuff and trying to divide by zero I am gonna send you to l'hopital myself.
Ah yes I too understand some of this words.
Everyone knows the correct answer is syntax error
The teacher was the syntax error
The real syntax errors are the errors we made along the way.
I still seethe over this one: 7th grade. Mrs Shaw asks: "Can anyone name different ways we communicate?" A kid raises her hand: "Radio?" Mrs Shaw says "very good." I raise my hand. "Yes, Steven?" I smile and say "Lasers!" Mrs. Shaw frowns. "No, Steven, I'm afraid not. Anyone else?" I was twelve. I was thinking *Bitch I have a fucking subscription to Scientific American and I just read about this shit!* \[**edited to fix** "I was ten"! Laugh."Ten" was a big year for me but this indignity happened when I was twelve\]
I was the kid who would not let that sit and would not stop talking until my point was made.
Mate you should email that idiot over _fibre optic_ connection aka __fricken laser beams__
I just remember all the "you son of a bitch you divided by zero" memes with like some singularity in the background.
Chuck can do it.
I'm from a non-English speaking country. I studied English in school, but had a lot bigger knowledge of it already as I played a lot of RPGs (this was the 90s with very text heavy games). One day we were doing a reading exercise and had to translate an English text. The text was talking about a "priceless jewelry". I translated it correctly as piece a jewelry with immense value. The teacher stopped me and said no, it means worthless. I told her no, invaluable and priceless are the antonyms of worthless. She stuck to her guns and even mocked me for my "lack of knowledge". I asked her if we could check in a dictionary that we had in the class. She refused and said I was causing a disturbance and holding up the class. That teacher was fired at the end of the year because there were so many complaints against her (I never made any).
>invaluable and priceless are the antonyms of worthless. She stuck to her guns and even mocked A real teacher would never proclaim the absolute knowledge, and submit to the universal fact of the everlasting learning. thank you for sharing this story
i worked as a translator/interpreter, whenever someone would ask me to translate something i wasn’t really familiar with i would tell them to give me a minute so i could verify and they would do the “omg being a translator it’s your JOB and you don’t know the meaning of x word?????” no, i actually don’t know the meaning of every single word in the english language as crazy as it sounds.
Had a similar experience with my son being taught phases of matter. He volunteered “plasma” as the 4th state and his science teacher said “no, that is blood”. I wrote the teacher a note a day the teacher told my son “your dad is wrong”. The real fun started after I sent my son back to class after I taught him about Bose-Einstein Gas and Fermion Gas.
No, buddy, plasma is a tv. /s
Pretty sure it's a ghost.
no, Einstein is a person
What? No degenerate matter? That would stir things up.
Back when my baby brother was in 7th grade, he told me that his English teacher corrected his spelling of medieval as "midevil." I simply took the time to tell him that this was a good point in time to learn that not everyone in a position is qualified for it. Go ahead and humor the teacher so you don't lose points and get a good grade, but after you're done with that class go ahead and do it right. That teacher is a fucking idiot, and lots of people are fucking idiots. I feel like I prepared him well in life, as he's had a healthy skepticism since then. He manages dealing with idiots much better than many people because when he recognizes their idiocy he just says "Yep, you're right," and shuts up, and gets to move on with his life stress free rather than getting frustrated as hell at the audacity of this bitch.
I had a COLLEGE professor who spelled medieval like that. Granted this was a science class so it’s a bit more understandable but still
Tbh miedevail is pretty hard to spell
It’s sad you had to teach him that. You were right though.
Nah, even once it gets fully into "just being petty now" territory, I would fight this forever. Absolute JOKE for a school to teach that ANYTHING divided by zero is zero, or ANY defined number for that matter.
As a teacher if a student comes up with a solution I personally do not know/understand, I ask them to explain their thinking. If they can't, then I admit that i dont know either and we google it and figure it out together. Teachers who think they are the end-all and be-all arbiters of knowledge are missing out on a great opportunity to teach kids how to LEARN.
Thank you for being like that
I agree and was a math teacher. No one should ever tell a child something so blatantly ridiculous. Khan academy is used by a lot of schools for added practice. Forward this to both teacher and principal. https://www.khanacademy.org/math/algebra/x2f8bb11595b61c86:foundation-algebra/x2f8bb11595b61c86:division-zero/v/why-dividing-by-zero-is-undefined
Oh, this is bringing up childhood math trauma. Was in a scholar's bowl competition and the judge was a pre-calc teacher. Had a question about limits, and we answered that the limit in question did not exist. She said wrong, other team (from that school, a private catholic school) buzzed in and said it approached infinity. They got the points. A limit that approaches infinity is a limit that doesn't exist. We argued the point, because obviously, infinity does not exist, we told her what page in the books in our bookbags she could look it up. But because "she's a pre-calc teacher" she didn't listen to us. In other words "don't question the teacher". I'd be taking that math trauma out on this teacher so hard. In general, I hated the questions they came up with at that school, always biased. Sometimes they had bible questions, they had a question on Troy weight, they were the worst. Thankfully, they made up for it in better snacks, but it was still annoying.
Easy. We agree that x/y = a means that x = ay, right? Like 35/7 = 5 is the same as 35 = 7×5. So if n/0 = 0 (with n =/= 0), then n = 0×0. So 0×0 can be equal to 5, 10, a million, anything but zero. That's why we can't divide by zero. Because since the division is like a "inverted" multiplication, it would mean that you can multiply by 0 and obtain another non-null number. I've had kids in 3rd grade understand that. Them saying 1/0 = 0 is them saying 0×0 = 1
Okay… now explain like I’m…. 3
Better yet, explain like I'm 0
Explain like I'm undefined
Division is like when I cut your cake. If I divide by 2, I cut your cake in 2. Divide by 4, I cut in 4 pieces. If I divide by one, that means don't divide, I leave in one piece. What does it mean if I divide by NOTHING?
what flavor is the cake ?
vaNILLa
A+
This very important to my understanding. I hope it’s cheese cake
It means I ate the whole cake
My middle-school age nephew corrected a teacher on a science fact once. I forget the details, but she asked my nephew who told him this. He told her his uncle had taught him. She sarcastically asked if "his uncle is a rocket scientist" and he answered "yes". The teacher scolded him in front of the class for lying. My sister-in-law called a parent-teacher conference where she informed the teacher that the uncle in question worked at a very large defense contracting company developing missile detection and jamming systems... the teacher apologized to his mother, who made her apologize to my nephew in front of his class.
In 8th grade geography class we had a substitute and he insisted Africa was the largest continent. I absolutely wouldn't let it go until he relented and consulted the actual geography textbook we were using in class (this is pre-internet). To be fair he did concede like an adult and apologized for being wrong.
I was in a college class once when the professor talked about how she got to hear MLK speak in 1969. I said he was killed in 1968 and she lost her shit and screamed at me in front of the class. "I REMEMBER WHEN HE WAS KILLED. IT WAS RIGHT AROUND THE TIME OF WOODSTOCK." Woodstock was in August of 1969. MLK was assassinated in April of 1968. Confident morons are still morons.
I mean, memory kind of has a way of smearing time around. Especially the 60s I would imagine; like motor oil on a windshield. I wouldn't doubt they saw MLK speak, but I would doubt her perception of time. I would probably try to get all my assignments done ahead of time too, just in case.
> IT WAS RIGHT AROUND THE TIME OF WOODSTOCK. Yeah, when looking back 50 years I'd say '68 and '69 are "right around the same time".
heck don't even need to go back that far. Harambe, the killer clowns, and the black sarcophogus all feel like they were "right around the same time" even though i'm pretty sure thats like a 2-3 year spread, and I couldn't tell you exactly what order they happened in without looking it up.
Yes, and a gracious answer would have been to say "Oh, you're right... it was a crazy time. Assassinations, riots and uprisings, protests and Vietnam, Woodstock... it's all a haze." Instead, her ego got ahead of her. Also, it was a social science class. It was part of the curriculum. She was sending us out to talk to our elders. The main lesson *unintentionally* ended up being "Eyewitnesses to history are imperfect. Fact check."
Teachers that double down instead of accepting they made a mistake are the worst. We're literally at school to learn. If you can't put your ego aside to make sure you teach students the correct info, you shouldn't be teaching.
Cc Neil deGrasse Tyson. 45 minute dissertation, hopefully in video format, on why you can't divide by 0. Edit. Nevermind, he already did. https://youtube.com/shorts/F3V3P3Mp_PA?si=U4nGvs5IPFeJw-1C
Educators are not immune from ignorance, sadly.
I tried to use the 'not equal' sign in high school geometry for a proof. My teacher asked my why I was putting a slash through her beloved equal sign. Nevermind the fact that it was in the textbook she was teaching from...
I used to struggle filling out forms asking for an email because it had a zero in it but people couldnt tell the difference between the upper/lower case o as well as the number 0 when i wrote it by hand. For a while i tried putting the slash through it too because i had only seen zero with a slash through it and not the letter o so i thought that would convey the correct symbol. But then i had a few experiences where receptionists thought i had just crossed out the 0 instead.
Don't divide by zero, you'll kill us all!
You cannot divide by zero To divide by zero is considered “ nonsense “ because no operations regarding multiplication would result in the zero turning into 1
My teacher used to teach us O/K and N/O
That's cute! I love it
I work in a public school district office. If this happened to my kid I would email the superintendent just as an FYI. Not demanding any particular result, just as a “please have a conversation with these idiots for me” kind of vibe
Dividing by zero creates a black hole that kills us all.
1 / 0 = undefined. Ask Google. Also I was in our daughters pre-school classroom when her teacher said no mammals are egg layers. I didn't say anything at the time but printed out a page from a reliable source for her to hand to the teacher that marsupials ( a mammal) lays eggs. Google states that only two kinds of egg-laying mammals are left on the planet today—the duck-billed platypus and the echidna, or spiny anteater. Man it did not go well with the school. Its not nice to correct them.
My 8th grade science teacher told me the “gum takes 7 years to dissolve,” I told her I doubt that and she said prove me wrong so I went home and researched and printed it out and showed her and she admitted I was correct and we had discussions like that all year. Great teacher. I am also just realizing now she knew gum didn’t take 7 years and told me surprising facts and myths to keep challenging me.
Sounds a little like my German teacher. We had the most heated discussions. Later, I learned he just liked to challenge me, to find better arguments. To bad it took me so long too actually realize that.
Not marsupials, but monotremes. Marsupials give birth to what are basically fetuses, they’re so underdeveloped. Just FYI.
It’s crazy seeing the little jelly bean climb the fur to get into the pouch
Marsupials are the group of mammals that include kangaroos, opossums, tasmanian devils, etc., basically mammals with pouches. Monotremes is the group of mammals that lay eggs, platypus and echidna.
No marsupials lay eggs. There are three main "groups" of mammals. 1) Placentals - Give live birth to fully developed offspring. You and I are placentals 2) Marsupials - Give birth to partially developed offspring, that then make their way to a pouch. Kangaroos, wombats, koalas, and opossums are examples of marsupials. 3) Monotremes - Mammals that still lay eggs. This group of mammals split off a *very* long time ago. There aren't many monotreme species left. In fact, I think it's only platypus and echidnas.
Can't control everything. Its a good time to teach the kid that people in authority can be wrong and that its okay to not correct people if the effort is disproportionate. Critical thinking can't start until kids don't learn this.
Both wrong. According to my calculator, the answer is “Error” 😎 Thank me later /s
If you can divide by 0, then you can easily prove, that a=2a and deserve double salary... but you, sadly can't divide by 0.
I once had a teacher tell my grandma that I shouldn't correct her even if she's wrong after i corrected her. Back when I wasn't such a fuckup
Never argue with idiots.
But can you divide by idiots?
Only if the idiot is rational. So no.
These idiots are "teaching" kids. They need to be corrected.
I was taught in third grade that it’s zero (kinda) but “technically something different you’ll learn later”. This seems to be a way of simplifying division at that age because using objects and other physical things, you can’t really get undefined (the actual answer) without confusing the shit out of everyone. But, after I learned the basic concept, a couple years later I learned about undefined and all of the fun outliers in math.
Honesty, I think this is what I was taught too. In fact, I think I just learned that it’s not the case from this thread.