Especially when you just make shit up. Apparently a

Dr James Anderson, from the University of Reading’s computer science department, says his new theorem solves an extremely important problem – the problem of nothing.

link

He calls his “number” nullity, and it is a representation of a number “off of the number line”. He proudly touts in his video that he has solved the problem that has been plaguing mathematicians for 1200 years, ie: solving problems that would require division by zero. He thereby demonstrates solving 0⁰ with his nullity.

The problem here is, anyone can make up anything not attached to the number line (he showed integers in the video, but I assume he meant all Reals). He is attaching rules that were developed for Real numbers, and trying to say they work for things that aren’t on the Real number line. You can’t go arbitrarily attaching theorems to things, no matter how basic they are. He is making a label for the absence of division by zero, no more. And you can’t compute jack with just a label.

Well, if you can just make crap up like that, I could make, say, a “new” number 3! This number 3 doesn’t reside on the number line, but I’m going to brilliantly assign it the value of the integer 6. Sure, it isn’t actually six, but I’m going to treat it like six so, therefore by my theory: 3 + 3 = 12! w00t, I made new math!

I tried looking over the article to see if he tried, y’know, actually proving something like nullity should exist, but I didn’t find it. If anyone else does, let me know. The report states clearly he is a Computer Science professor at the University of Reading. I’m shocked. I love how he’s showing it to a bunch of pre-teens instead of his actual peers. The kids don’t know what the hell is going on and won’t argue against it. They get to be on TV for it, I mean, why protest?

I wish the semester weren’t over, but I may try to bounce this article off my Discrete Math teacher to watch his head pop off.