Talk:Divisor

message: I have added a second definition to the lead, covering the sense of "divisor" to as at the start of the Terminology section.  I don't actually agree with my own addition: an article should be about a concept, and should not cover two independent concepts that happen to share the same name.  I think that this article should cover only the sense in abstract algebra (possibly restricted to integers), with a hatnote with a redirect to the other sense.  To get rid of the alternative definition will involve removing a few lines only.  Comment?  — Quondum 22:53, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't worry, I've removed my additional definition, and made some changes to clear up some of the confusion between the concepts in this article. — Quondum 00:04, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Divisor defined as denominator 

message: I am teaching some remedial math, and point students to wikipedia sometimes.  Sending them here to learn the meaning of divisor would be a mistake; this page apparently deals with integer divisors, but the term is more general.  I think a sentence briefly explaining this, with a link to the page on division would improve this page (see also the first comment by "mirwin" and the "wow" comment above).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.103.108.10 (talk) 21:27, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The link is already there in the hatnote at the top. Please keep in mind that Wikipedia is not a dictionary, but rather a reference. You should be pointing your student to wikt:divisor for what you want. —Quondum 00:16, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The unqualified page "Divisor" should explain the word in its most common sense. If the most common sense does not have it's own article like in our case here, the unqualified Divisor should redirect to the disambiguation page (Divisor (disambiguation)), where the most common sense defined the top, and all other meanings are listed as well. Shcha (talk) 15:25, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definition of divisor at opening of article is not the most common 

message: The current article focuses only on the definition of divisor restricted to the field (er, ring) of integers. The section "Definition" states "Two versions of the definition of a divisor are commonplace".
This is patently silly. The word "divisor" is commonly used to refer to the "number on the bottom of a division", as it is in Wikipedia's own Long division article. "As in all division problems, one number, called the dividend, is divided by another, called the *divisor*, producing a result called the quotient."  
One can appreciate that there are more restricted uses of a word in certain technical or academic realms. That does not mean that these realms dictate the meaning of the word over all other uses. This should be pointed out in the introduction. If a discussion of the more-specialized meaning is valuable, then it should be accompanied by an indication that it's a more specialized meaning.
This is, after all, the article titled "Divisor", not titled "Divisor (within mathematics, narrowly construed)"  Gwideman (talk) 23:18, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Both meanings of "divisor" are of common use. I have expanded the hatnote for clarifying the point. D.Lazard (talk) 15:40, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Common definitions of "divisor" 

message: "a divides b" is abbreviated a|b
Is there an abbreviation for "a does not divide b"? 2.24.119.101 (talk) 17:23, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure, a\nmid b. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:27, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Negation? 

message: This article shows why the civilian world has such a problem with math. If I ever go to hell I expect that I will be forced to read this article every day, and I *am* a mathematician. Something as basic as divisor shouldn't require a PhD to understand, or two minutes to figure it out from the noise.
I really hoped I could simply find the following sentence way up top in the article. Maybe even as a paragraph right above the table of contents. I submit this for consideration.
Simply speaking, for the equation c equals a divided by b (c=a/b), c is the quotient, a is the dividend, and b is the divisor.
Perhaps "Simply" could be "Generally".
If you just put that in the intro paragraph, not only will the suicide rate decline among math students, but the time it takes to simply see "which one is called the divisor" will be reduced to - a mere fraction.24.27.72.99 (talk) 04:27, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: That is a different meaning of the word "divisor" than the one this article discusses. Perhaps you stopped reading before you got to the second line? The one that says "This article is about a relation between two integers. For the second operand of a division, see Division (mathematics)." ? —David Eppstein (talk) 04:37, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

text: So you are arguing that the other meaning of divisor (the second argument to a division operation) should be the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC? Maybe, but my feeling is that "divisor" by itself is more likely to have this meaning, and "divisor" with the other meaning is not likely to be the first word that introduces the topic of division, nor the first word that someone looks up when they look up "division". So even though the other meaning may be more common, this may be the meaning that makes more sense as the first result for searching for this specific word. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:57, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Complex! 

message: I am on firefox 56.0.1 (64-bit) on Win 7 and I get this red text on the page: Screenshot
I have no idea what it is and what it means, so can someone fix it? Thanks, 79.101.241.42 (talk) 19:10, 25 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm no expert on MathML, but the WP markup I think is not the problem.  Does the problem persist?  Do you see it in the same location each time? The error message seems to be saying that the engine for processing <math> tags can't be reached for some reason.  I'm using similar software and don't see the red error text. -- Elphion (talk) 04:04, 26 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Apparently, this is a problem of connexion between servers (html, latex and svg rendering). If the problem persists try purging the page (on my browser, button "purge" in menu "more" at the top of the page). If this does not work, verify if your version of Firefox is up do date. Otherwise you may ask your question at the help desk. D.Lazard (talk) 15:07, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Does this page have a bug or is it just me?? (Screenshot) 

message: It seems to me that both definitions in the article as stated allow 0 | 0, and that where they differ is whether or not nonzero integers also divide zero. So I made some edits reflecting this. However, I notice that there are several footnotes in the article pointing out facts that require 0 | 0 to be true. Are there other common definitions that do not define divisibility when 0 is involved at all? Double sharp (talk) 03:46, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: This edit is not correct.  If you restrict k != 0 in m*k = n, then 0|0 but no other m|0.  Thus 0 is comparable with no other element in the lattice, and in particular is not the largest element. -- Elphion (talk) 05:44, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  You're absolutely right, of course. I thought of that after making the edit, but my bus reached my stop before I could fix it and it then slipped my mind. I've changed it to read "Given the definition for which m | 0 holds even for nonzero integer m", which should be correct now. Double sharp (talk) 06:46, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: In the meantime, I have taken the liberty of removing the two notes that call out statements that depend on 0 | 0, as both definitions agree that 0 | 0 is true. On the flip side I have added a parenthetical comment that the example 5 | 0 only holds in the first definition. Double sharp (talk) 06:49, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

text: OK, thanks for clearing this up. I have accordingly changed the qualifying first phrase in the "In abstract algebra" section to read "In definitions that include 0". Double sharp (talk) 16:14, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: It looks much better now. -- Elphion (talk) 19:40, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  0 yet again 

message: Hi all,
came here to check what a divisor and dividend is, wasn't entirely certain which was which. I expected to find a really simple description of "in a/b (or equivalently a÷b) then b is the divisor and a is the dividend".  This is a superficial definition because it's purely a notational artefact, but still IMO useful. Thoughts? 79.75.100.60 (talk) 11:45, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: You are confusing two meanings of "divisor". I have modified the beginning of the article for trying to avoid such a confusion. In particular, the first line of the article (in italics) links now to Division (mathematics) where you will find the definition that you want. D.Lazard (talk) 13:18, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I see. Thank you for sorting that out. 85.211.202.129 (talk) 21:46, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Syntactically a divisor is... 

message: PLEASE...put this:  "INTEGER ARITHMETIC ONLY" in the title.  I read half the article thinking someone had lost their mind before looking up and seeing the italicized portion at the top.  Please.  Lots of people will walk away confused if they miss the easily overlooked italics.   N0w8st8s (talk) 17:49, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: (a) It's not "misleading" -- this is the most common use of the word in mathematics. (b) It's already in italics and bold, twice at the head of the article. -- Elphion (talk) 00:54, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Misleading Title