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As Billy Preston so eloquently states in his #1 hit from 1974, "Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'." We're all pretty clear on the concept of zero -- the void, the absence, the sheer nothingness of it. But whether it's classified as an odd or even number is an entirely different subject that has puzzled people throughout the ages. To begin our quest into the land of zilch, we stopped off at the Zero category in the Yahoo! Directory. Surprisingly, we found several sites in a category where you might not expect to find anything. Only one site tackled the pertinent issue. Zero
in Four Dimensions featured a lengthy discourse on how the number should be categorized. In the section labeled "Logical Perspective," the author states that zero has a hard time being either odd or even since it isn't even really a number! Zero sits alone, smack dab in between the positive and the negative, signifying absolutely nothing. To get a better grasp on the concept, we tried an advanced search on "number zero" + odd. On a page titled The Zero Effect by Donn Responds, we read that an even number divided by 2 leaves no remainder, while an odd number divided by 2 leaves a remainder. According to this logic, zero would be an
even number. However, Donn doesn't buy this argument and states: Zero is divisible by any number and leaves no remainder. In this it is unique. ( 0/n = 0 ; independent of what "n" is. When a number...say 5, is divided by a pedestrian integer you get quotients like: 1.666 (5/3) or 0.625 (5/8) but divide any number by zero and the quotient is...undefined. Every single time. After some further digging, we turned up two other sources that argued that 0 falls into the realm of even numbers. Dr. Pete of the Math Forum insists that every integer must be even or odd, and states, "An integer 'n' is called *even* if there exists an integer m such that n = 2m...From this, it is clear that 0 = (2)(0) is
even." The Straight Dope echoes these findings in a column on the subject. So it seems we have a definite split amongst the minds of mathematics. Some sources claim zero is neither negative nor positive, while others label it a positive number. It's a positively odd situation that leaves us in a quandary over nothing. Ultimately, we suggest reading through the sources and deciding for yourself.
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