Cover Image: Lilly Guilbeault, March 2026
By: Flore Devernay, Contributing Writer
We’ve all had to endure the excruciatingly painful task of “small talk” that occurs in casual conversation. Don’t be fooled! The talk may be small but it by no means is an easy task… mentally at least. Thankfully, there is a way to make these discussions more interesting: numbers! If you keep reading, you might just find a new favorite number, the perfect weapon against dull conversation. These articles are ranked from least complex to most complex, depending on your interest level.
1. The number 0: nothing at all… But in all things at once. Math level: ✮✮✰✰✰ “How can not being be?”
This paradox troubled many Greek philosophers and mathematicians before 400 BC. Although other civilizations had started to develop symbols to represent a null value, the Greeks remained strictly opposed and perplexed by the idea of a “not being”, with Pythagoras himself rejecting the idea of zero. Why would we represent something that doesn’t exist? As Parmenides said, “What is, is; and what is not, is not”.
However, little by little, civilizations began using a representation of zero as part of their numeric system. The Chinese simply left empty space between their counting rods, while the Indians used a black dot to differentiate a smaller from a larger number (like we do with 1, 10, 100, 1000,…) and set clear rules for arithmetic operations using zero. By the 16th century, Arabic numerals and the 0 we know today were effectively used as the dominant number system in Europe.
Zero is interesting not only by its use as a “nothing” value but also as a placeholder. As much as it represents the absence of quantity and the boundary between the positives and negatives, it also indicates the “largeness” of a number. For example, we know 305 is larger than 35 because of the 0 in the middle. Here, 0 only “holds” the tens spot, indicating the number does not have added tens beyond 300. It allows us to shift to higher powers without needing a new symbol for each new magnitude.
Zero is also unique for its singularity, as it does not conform to the same algebraic rules governing other numbers. It is considered neither negative nor positive, or alternatively both negative and positive. It acts as the boundary between negative and positive values, and is the origin for any coordinate system. Its singularity is furthermore highlighted in the binary system, where each character is represented by a unique combination of 1s and 0s.
But where zero really gets intriguing is by its involvement in perhaps one of the greatest problems in math: division by zero. In the 7th century, Brahmagupta suggested a number divided by zero is simply the fraction of that number with zero as the denominator (3/0=3/0, doesn’t explain much, does it?). Bhaskara II stated division by zero results in an infinite quantity—an idea later rejected because it leads to clear mathematical contradictions.
Dividing a number, like 1, by 0 is the equivalent of saying “what is the number for which, when I multiply it by 0, results in 1”. However, we know any number multiplied by 0 becomes 0 itself. Some have argued that 1/0=∞, but let me explain why that goes against our mathematical rules. Saying 1/0=∞ means that ∞*0=1. So if you added ∞*0 with itself, you would get ∞*0+∞*0=2 which by factoring, becomes ∞(0+0)=2 and because 0+0=0, ∞*0=2. But haven’t we previously stated that ∞*0=1?
By assuming that division by 0 is possible, we have come to the conclusion that 1=2, and I have a feeling that this is a false statement…at least according to our current mathematical rules. Maybe this argument is compelling enough to convince you that sometimes the most powerful idea is… nothing at all.
The Abstract 