[syzarian]

The definition of division is multiplication by the multiplicative inverse. It may be the case that some elements don’t have such an inverse but the definition is analogous to that of subtraction. The analogy is not perfect because every element has an additive inverse while not every element had a multiplicative inverse.

[topaz0]

What you're saying is that the analogy between subtraction and division is good as far as it goes. So why should "as far as it goes" end at zero not having an inverse, rather than division by zero producing something other than the multiplicative inverse of zero? The two choices end up having different structure, and so they end up being applicable to different things, but there is nothing wrong with either choice.

[syzarian]

The word division means something in mathematics. There is general agreement in what that word ought to mean. You can define a binary operation in such a way that it doesn’t look like what we normally think of as division and label your operation division. In the same way you can define the symbol duck to refer to what most people call a chair. You won’t get anyone else agreeing with your new definition though.

[topaz0]

We redefine multiplication for new contexts every day in math, I don't see why division should be any different. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_(mathematics)#Divisio...

[syzarian]

I think I understand better where you are coming from. In computer science I don’t know what they typically mean when they say “division”. I’ll be more precise. In abstract algebra division means multiplying by the inverse. All of the notions of division mentioned in the Wikipedia page come from this idea. Computers can’t work with within the realm of the entire real number system. There they have notions of type. They like to extend common operators like “/“ to things that normally it doesn’t apply to. A computer language will sometimes return a value of int or some other type when the integer 5 is divided by 3. Depending on how the language designer wanted things to work. This isn’t division in a mathematical sense though.

[topaz0]

I am not at all concerned with what is or isn't possible in a computer for the purposes of this discussion. My only point with the link is that dealing with inverses in particular situations (i.e. where multiplication has or doesn't have certain properties) frequently requires particular considerations, and the properties of division defined as multiplication by the inverse will have different properties as a result.

To be clear, do you disagree that it is commonplace in complex analysis to extend the complex plane by {infinity} and define 1/0 = infinity, 1/infinity = 0? I find it hard to imagine that you can't have encountered that given how much you seem to know about abstract algebra. Or do you just think that it is a bad idea, despite being commonplace? In either case, to say that mathematicians would not call that operation division as a result is contradictory to my experience, even if those two special cases don't fit the category of multiplication by the inverse.

Also to be clear, I know of no counterexamples in abstract algebra and it would make sense to me that in that context division would mean something very particular, in order to be able to talk about it with any generality. But as it happens, abstract algebra isn't all of math.

[syzarian]

This is getting very far from where the original question came from. When talking to a layman one would say division is always multiplication by the inverse. There are nuances involved that a lay person simply can’t appreciate or understand. Had I known you knew about the extended complex numbers I would have answered differently. The extended complex numbers are not a ring, not a group, not an algebra, and so…is it really division then?

In math often times the answer we give depends on the knowledge of the person asking the question. For instance we tell calculus 1 students 1/x is not continuous as a function from R-{0} to R. Of course in the standard induced topology it is a continuous function but explaining this to calculus 1 students would be very difficult.

https://math.stackexchange.com/a/2524779