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[–] 17 points 1 year ago (5 children)

It's not a matter of accuracy even, if for any two natural numbers x < y it holds x - y = 0 then x = y, which is a contradiction. So this is basic consistency requirement, basically sabotaging any effort to teach kids math.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Depends on how your mathematical system is defined. In the mathematics system this teacher is using, negative numbers simply do not exist. The answer to 5-6 is the same as 5/0: NaN. Is this mathematical system incomplete? Yes. But, as has been thoroughly proven, there is no such thing as a complete mathematical system.

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  • I was under the impression that there is in fact such a thing as a complete mathematical system (if you take "mathematical system" in the broader sense of "internally consistent system"), but such a system would be pretty limited and therefore rather useless.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    The answer would still not be 0 as 0 is clearly still well defined within that system. NaN, undefined, etc. would be acceptable answers though. Otherwise you define:

    for x > y, y - x = 0

    Which defines that x = y

    Resulting in the conditional x > y no longer being true

    Also x/0 isn't NaN. It's just poorly defined and so in computing will often return "NaN" because what the answer is depends on the numbering system used and accidentally switching/conflating numbering systems is a very easy way to create a mathmatical fallacy like the one above.

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