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when we're dealing with one and zero with fractions there are kind of some special
cases that we want to take a look at and these are listed in the table below so
let's take a look at each one
we have four over one if i'm going to compute that I'm going to take four divided by
one
and the simplified result there is four
so if we wanted to create a general rule let's write here that a is any number
let's use a to represent in general if we have any number a
divided by one the result would just be a
for four over four that's four divided by four as the computation
any number
four divided by itself four gives me one
so i can make a general rule
a
over
a
equals
one
if i have zero divided by four my computation is
written this way
and zero parts of a number
therefore i can say as a general rule
that zero divided by any number
equals zero
and there is a little stipulation that we need to make here it won't really come up in
this class but a cannot
be zero in this case
zero divided by itself is not zero
four over zero is four divided by zero well i can't really divide
a number into zero parts so we say that
this
number does not
exist
and so we have then a general rule
that any number
divided by zero
does not
exist
so you don't have to memorize these but it really is good to know
when you see something like four over one though that's just four you don't have to
write four over one you can just right four
four over four is one
etc...