On Fri, July 8, 2005 10:25 pm, Carl Fink said: > On Fri, Jul 08, 2005 at 09:24:07PM -0500, Michael Martinell wrote: > >> Following these statements and math, one is always dividing, not >> subtracting. No matter how many times you divide you are still left >> with >> parts. If you then call each of the new parts a whole and divide it you >> never end up with 0 or less then 0. Unless you divide by 0, but of >> course >> that is an imaginary number (i). > > Division by zero is invalid. It does not produce i, the square root of > -1, > it simply means you can't use that formula in that situation. > --
hmmm....I distinctly remember doing that in college algebra (during calculus prep) a few years ago. It's true that you can't do it on most calculators though. The instructor did have a method for dividing by zero, producing an imaginary value (which are actually real) and solving the equation. Here is some an excerpt from a calculus web site: http://quantumrelativity.calsci.com/Calculus/Chapter5.html If you want to know q, you can't just use the ArcTangent function. First of all, if the hypotenuse is verticle, that is the Side Adjacent has length 0, then you have to divide by zero before you can use the function. Because of this, most computer programming languages have two functions, one called arctan, and one called something like arctan2. Arctan2 take two arguments, the Side Adjacent and the Side Opposite, which allows the function to check and not divide by zero. Secondly, the arctan function returns the wrong values for most of the circle. What you really want is this: -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
