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Is 0 even?
By Denise Malone (T2437) on Monday, April 3, 2000 - 04:46 pm:

I would like to know if zero is classified as an even number.

By Amanda Turner (Agt24) on Monday, April 3, 2000 - 06:06 pm:

An even number is defined as a number which is exactly divisible by 2. Since 0/2=0, 0 is exactly divisible by 2 and so zero is an even number.

By Denise Malone (T2437) on Tuesday, April 4, 2000 - 02:00 pm:

The thing is we got confused when we saw this article, see below.

If you feel that the question if zero is an even number is of no practical value at all, let me quote the following news from the German television news program (ZDF) "Heute" on Oct. 1, 1977:

Smog alarm in Paris: Only cars with an odd terminating number on the license plate are admitted for driving. Cars with an even such number were not allowed to be driven. There were problems: Is the terminating number 0 an even number? Drivers with such numbers were not fined, because the police did not know the answer.
By Sean Hartnoll (Sah40) on Tuesday, April 4, 2000 - 04:35 pm:

Well, in general I wouldn't consider the police too much of an authority number-wise...

The point is they wanted to keep half the cars off the road, so

odd: 1,3,5,7,9
even: 0,2,4,6,8

And we have the same number of odd and even terminating numbers which was the whole point initially.

Sean

By Sean Hartnoll (Sah40) on Tuesday, April 4, 2000 - 04:40 pm:

...although I can imagine some interesting conversations as the police stopped cars with 0 as terminating number...

By Denise Malone (T2437) on Wednesday, April 5, 2000 - 04:10 pm:

Thanks for the clarification. It was my daughter, in Year 1, who asked me the question. She was learning about even numbers, dividing the number exactly in half with no remainder. She felt if you hadn't got anything then you could not split it in to two!
Fair logic for a 5 year old!

By Sean Hartnoll (Sah40) on Thursday, April 6, 2000 - 06:24 pm:

There isn't a problem in dividing zero. If I've got no sweets and I'm told to share whatever sweets I may have with my sister then we both end up with no sweets. :(

Alternatively, one can think of division as the inverse of multiplication. What is the number such that when you multiply it by 2 gives you zero? zero, of course.