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.
Any answer here actually makes sense. You could say you’re giving each of your 0 friends 1 cookie, or 27 cookies, or -8 cookies - and it all works out because you end up giving away 0*1, or 0*27, or 0*-8 cookies in each case, or just 0 - the exact amount you have. It works out because 0/0 isn’t undefined, it’s indeterminate. Splitting any nonzero number of cookies amongst 0 friends would truly have no answer, though, since n/0 is undefined for n ≠ 0. Of course that assumes you aren’t having any of the cookies yourself.
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.
Any answer here actually makes sense. You could say you’re giving each of your 0 friends 1 cookie, or 27 cookies, or -8 cookies - and it all works out because you end up giving away 0*1, or 0*27, or 0*-8 cookies in each case, or just 0 - the exact amount you have. It works out because 0/0 isn’t undefined, it’s indeterminate. Splitting any nonzero number of cookies amongst 0 friends would truly have no answer, though, since n/0 is undefined for n ≠ 0. Of course that assumes you aren’t having any of the cookies yourself.
I feel attacked.