Is Zero a Number?

[Felicia Palmer]

Interesting question, isn't it? You would think, not to say assume, that any math teacher would agree with the fact that zero is indeed a number. It is located on the number line between 1 and -1, you can add to it, multiply by it, divide (although the "real" answer would be undefined), or subtract from it and obtain a negative number.

 

This morning, my kindergarten daughter, asked one of the teachers at my middle school the question, "What is the first number in the number system?" She (the student) gave her (the teacher)  the answer as being zero, to which this "eminent" teacher said, "No, it's not. Zero is not a number; it is a place holder." I almost spilled the coffee on me. The teacher left the room shortly after this conversation, and I tried to explain to my daughter why zero is a number.

 

At this point, I would like to hear from some of you, math teachers, about your position related to "zero". So, is zero a number or not? What is your final answer (if there is such a thing as a final answer on this)?

[Mary Henton]

This is an interesting conversation! Thank you, Felicia, for initiating this.

I did a search for zero in the MSP2 collection and found a piece on "Babylonian Mathematics." Inside that resource is a page on "The History of Zero." I'm not a mathematician nor a math teacher. So I found this very interesting. Never occurred to me to think about the history of zero. It's a surprise to read that zero as a place holder and a number is a relatively new concept (in the history of human civilization, that is).

[Felicia Palmer]

The following response if from Dr. Stephen Wilson who recently had a very interesting article in Educational Leadership (March 2011) -- In Defense of Mathematical Foundations.  Dr. Wilson is a professor of mathematics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. I contacted him via email ([e-mail]) and asked him the question of zero being a number. Below is his response:

 

"Of course zero is a number, and the fact that it is debated among elementary school teachers is a sign of how poorly they have been treated by the schools of education that supposedly educated them to be teachers.  They should be held accountable, and maybe that time is coming, but I doubt it.  Schools of education should teach math content of the sort needed by elementary school teachers.  This math is quite sophisticated, non-trivial, and specialized (fractions aren't the same for 4th graders as they are for research mathematicians).  It sounds like Schools of Education did not prepare everyone as well as they should have."

 

Thank you Dr. Wilson for your comment.

[Felicia Palmer]

Thank you so much for your comments. What surprised me most about the teacher's comment was that she did not acknowledged the fact that zero was a number. I will do a Google search and read more on this.

[Shelly Knippen]

I would also agree that Zero is a number.  Zero is in all of the subsets except, irrational and natural numbers.  Zero would also be a place holder .  If you Google "Is Zero a number", it gives you great information about how the number zero came about.

[Nicole Muth]

I would say it can be both a number and a place holder.  By itself it is a number.  In 0.003, it is a place holder.  Here is what Dr. Math had to say about the history of 0.  http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/52566.html

[mralby]

Zero is included in the real numbers, which makes zero a number by definition. The only subsets of the reals that do not include zero are the natural or counting numbers, and the irrational numbers. I would argue that zero is a number