Polynomial long division: Difference between revisions
(Created page with "At school everybody is taught this procedure to divide one number by another. The first number being called the '''dividend''' and the second the '''divisor''': <div style="text-align:center;"> 400px </div> It's possible that some people reverse the order, doing it from right to left. I have no idea about what causes this, but I remember making this mistake more than once. Could it be related to languages that are written right to left...") |
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Revision as of 23:15, 2 February 2022
At school everybody is taught this procedure to divide one number by another. The first number being called the dividend and the second the divisor:
It's possible that some people reverse the order, doing it from right to left. I have no idea about what causes this, but I remember making this mistake more than once. Could it be related to languages that are written right to left? I really don't know. If you take another look at it, this algorithm is nothing more than: 3 x 100 = 300, then 523 - 300 = 223. Then 3 x 70 = 210 and 100 + 70 = 170. Repeat. It's all based on base 10. What we do is to break down numbers in base 10, such as 523 = 500 + 20 + 3. Perhaps some people think it reversed, 3 + 20 + 500 = 523? It's really like asking: "What is easier? To do the sum from 1 to 10 or from 10 to 1?". For computers this doesn't matter at all.
