Can't Divide by Zero. How do we go about this?

Hi Daniel,

The Khana academy instructions you linked to are for doing that division with paper and pencil. Doing the same division in Numbers (or any spreadsheet) doesn't require the 'conversion' described.

Your example is 1,000,000 ÷ 0.50

The example itself is easy if you understand decimal notation and fractions. You could look at it and almost immediately say 'the answer is 2,000,000'

In Numbers, you would enter =1000000/0.50 then click the green checkmark to confirm that formula, and numbers would present the answer: 2000000 (likely formatted as 2,000,000).

If you wanted to do more than one division, you could use the same formula, replacing the numbers with references to two cells. In the example, the formula is placed in C2, and the 'two cells' are B2 and D2. the formula is filled down from D2 to D7, giving six pairs of cells in which you can enter the dividend (number to be divided) in column B and the divisor (number it is to be divided by) in column C, and get the answer.

In answer to the question in your subject line, "How can we divide by Zero?"

We can't. Division by zero is undefined, and attempting to do that in a spreadsheet will give you an error message similar to the one shown.

Regards,

Barry

The simplest definition of division is "repeated subtraction"

the overall algorithm for division is to subtract the denominator from the numerator until what's left is less than the denominator.

N / D is the division of N (the Numerator) by D (the denominator)

if N is 10 and D is 1

then you perform the subtraction of 1 from 10 until the remainder is less than D

10 - 1 = 9

9 - 1 = 8

.

.

.

1 - 0 = 0, DONE

we did that 10 times.

Now try it for D = 0.

you can do it but you will never finish-- which is why people say you cannot divide by zero.

But it is not an answer to the question you actually asked, it is not zero.

Unless the divisor was 0.00000 etc.

Or just 0.