Talk:Division (mathematics)

message: Given Addition, Multiplication and Subtraction are all named without appending (mathematics) at the end... and the likely thing people are trying to find when they go to a page called Division will be the mathematical version... can't we just have Division go straight to this page with a thing at the top for disambiguation? --93.97.23.110 (talk) 02:22, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes: your proposal would be more consistent with Wikipedia's style. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 10:30, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: While I'm generally in favour of making this move, one counterargument is that for addition, subtraction, and multiplication, all other uses of the word stem from or are to some extent indistinguishable from the mathematical sense of the word, while division as a mathematical concept stems from the more general concept of dividing something into smaller things. A set of 10 can be divided into 2 new sets, one with 7 and one with 3. This is very different from the mathematical sense, and some may consider this a compelling reason to keep Division as a disambiguation page, with the mathematical sense explicitly distinguished as such, while keeping the other operations where they are. That being said, the asymmetry does bother be, and in my opinion the move should be made. -Ramzuiv (talk) 02:34, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Such a move has no chance to reach a WP:consensus, as the word has many meanings that have nothing to do with mathematics (14 meanings in the Wiktionary entry), and the mathematical meaning is certainly not the WP:primary topic. The primary topic, if any, is probably "The act or process of splitting anything". D.Lazard (talk) 08:06, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page title 

message: 20 ÷ 5 isn't dialectical English. When you write something, if possible write the wordish for of it.
twenty divided by five or ?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:2149:8464:BA00:BCE5:B794:8895:1FC4 (talk) 10:06, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point. Fixed. D.Lazard (talk) 10:37, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Divided by - what is a succinct synonym? 

message: I'm going through the criteria for this page to be considered class B, and I'll just put some notes here for my thoughts as I go through the checklist. For Verifiability, I have started working my way through this page, placing markers on statements that may be worth verifying. We need much more verification before this article is in a good place.
As regards structure, I think the structure of this article is perfectly suitable, and have marked it as such, but it annoys me that the structure of this page and that of multiplication are quite different, so I would like to propose taking the effort to align this page's structure with that of multiplication, as well as subtraction and addition.
As far as accuracy, I find no reason to complain
I would like to see more content on this page. Off the top of my head, it seems worthwhile to mention the formal definition of arithmetic, division as it regards dimensional analysis, and probably also quotient sets. If you can think of anything else worth adding, please let me know.
Grammar and Style is good
This article seems quite lacking in support material. Some topics that stand to be illustrated include euclidean vs. rational division, illustrating both quotition and partition, and perhaps other interpretations of division, why commutativity and association don't hold, why it is left-distributative but not right-distributative, manual methods of division, and division of complex numbers and matrices. All of these topics have some way they can be visualized, and such illustrations will greatly aid understanding.
The standard I'm using for accessibility for this article is "can a 5 year old understand this". Maybe 5 years is a little extreme, but at the very least a 7-year old should be able to follow a good chunk of this article, which covers what many people would consider an elementary subject. Of course, some things (such as polynomial rings in one indeterminate) will be mentioned that I wouldn't expect a kid to understand - for more technical things such as these, I ask "would my father (that is, a knowledgeable person with a tangential interest in math) understand this?". I've gone through the introduction, channeling my inner 5-year-old to ask as many stupid questions as I could, taking notes, and I edited the article based on most of the notes I made. Considering how much I did edit, I don't feel that this article is at the level of accessibility that it should be at.
While I did pause at the lack of definition of what arithmetic is, I didn't really define it in my recent edit. Perhaps it should be defined, but I felt comfortable leaving it as it was. I feel the explanations for quotition and partition can be improved. I suspect this part: "In a ring the elements by which division is always possible are called the units (for example, 1 and –1 in the ring of integers)" can be improved.
- Ramzuiv (talk) 03:43, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikiprojects B class checklist 

message: A little pressed for time here but can someone please rewrite the intro? Current intro as of the time of this writing exemplifies the worst of Wikipedia intros: at some point I assume someone once wrote a couple basic starter sentences, and then some later editor began adding all this extra info (perhaps to show off their knowledge) about ISO 80000-2 standards and usage of symbols in anglophone countries and info about deprecating the division sign in favor of the solidus character blah blah blah. None of that stuff belongs in an intro lead paragraph about a general mathematical topic. The intro paragraph should be like one, at most two, concise, succinct sentences about division, and then all the ISO 80000-2 stuff and discussion about anglophone countries and other ridiculousness can be moved way further down in the article. Can’t express how much I hate intro paragraphs like this. —PowerPCG5 (talk) 03:23, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Can someone please rewrite the intro

message: An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect :Delen and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 February 14#Delen until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion.  ~~~~User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 06:07, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Delen" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]] 

message: There are no illustrations of how division is done at the introductory (grammar school), with __  in the U.S.  or other 'tools" in other countries.
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Kdammers (talk) 03:09, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  missing basics