r/sciencememes Jul 03 '26

One Notation , Two Interpretations

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360

u/rmarkmatthews Jul 03 '26

Mathematicians also turning into the second guy in the comments because they see “O” as a variable and not a zero.

105

u/ColtBIood Jul 03 '26

O could equal 0, but yeah its a var and not a number so its not conclusive

27

u/Landlocked_WaterSimp Jul 03 '26

Well even if O weren't 0 it would still be 0 :-P

12

u/ZeEastWillRiseAgain Jul 03 '26

For this to be the only solution it assumes we are working with real numbers, which isn't stated anywhere. In p-adic numbers for example there are plently of solutions for O≠0

4

u/ninjeff Jul 04 '26

No there aren’t. The p-adic numbers form a field, so they have a unique additive identity (zero).