Winston Churchill... A carrot ???

The only way to get 1=0 is to use i which is an imaginary number representing the squareroot of -1. This is still an imaginary number and it cant exist in the real world, there is still no real world way of making 1=0.

Little Darwin said:

Thorsen said:

Wrong: (a+b)(a-b)=a(a-b) (Equation 4)

Correct: (a+b)(a-b)= a^2-ab+ab-b^2 = a^2-b^2

Another Edit: This is done in many forms to try and prove that 1=0, but it is at this point that I always see this failure.

Likewise, the formula "(a+b)(a-b)= " deontes, that there are two answers to the formula in that there are two possible outcomes a+b and a-b... thus two different answers for this fomula either subracting b or adding b. a will never yeild the same result unless b=0

I don't quite understand the last paragraph... Are you saying that the two terms in (a+b)(a-b) = ???? can only mean two roots? If so, there are many polynomials with a single root. Or more properly I guess two identical roots.

Actually Equation 4 is correct if a=b... The biggest error comes in the following step.

if a=b then a-b=0 and equation 5 is derived by dividing both sides by zero, which is not defined.

Of course if a=b, equation 4 can be reduced to 0=0 which is perfectly valid, but applying undefined functions makes the proof invalid.

Lol, my math is not what it used to be. you are correct the roots can be two seperate things as this setup would work in reverse:

(4)(2)= 8
(3+1)(3-1)=8
a=3, b=1
(a+b)(a-b)=8 so this works

Edit: the biggest flaw is still the use of foil as the original example I stated though:

Wrong: (a+b)(a-b)=a(a-b) (Equation 4) {this leads to the result posted: aa-ab= a(a-b)}

Correct: (a+b)(a-b)= a^2-ab+ab-b^2 = a^2-b^2

noobvious said:

product fred said:

lolwut?

+1. Mathematics, not one of my strong suits. So that whole post may as well be attic greek to me.

math hurts...