# Asking questions without providing a definition

Update: This post was originaly about the loose usage of even and odd, where people without providing a definition of what they meant by even or odd asked inaccurate questions like "is 0 even?". Although I tried to draw the attention to the fact the historically neither 1 or 0 was considered even or odd ( 0 was not even around when the concept of even or oddness was coined ), it missed the target by making the readers conclude that it was about claiming that 0 is not even. After continued downvoting without leaving constructive comments it was time for an update. So here it goes : if one uses equivalance classes to define 2 mutualy exclusive sets by

$Evens = \{ 2k : k \in \mathbb Z \} , Odds = \{ 2k+1 : k \in \mathbb Z \}$ Using this everyone can agree which set 1 or 0 fall in, regarding 1 and 0 being always considered even or odd there are plenty of math history sites.

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So what is the question? –  Yuval Filmus Dec 26 '10 at 22:23
Mariano's comment to your answer already addresses this issue. You are using an unnecessarily restrictive definition of even and odd. –  Qiaochu Yuan Dec 26 '10 at 22:23
Your posts in the linked thread and now this are going dangerously close to 'crank' territory. –  kahen Dec 26 '10 at 22:41
I don't understand this post/question at all. –  user02138 Dec 26 '10 at 22:52
@Arjang: in that case your question is a philosophical question (although, as stated, I do not find it a very compelling one) and as such is off-topic for this site. I have voted to close. –  Pete L. Clark Dec 27 '10 at 1:30

$\ldots,-4,-2,0,2,4,\ldots$ are even integers, $2,4,6, \ldots$ are even positive integers. $\ldots,-5,-3,-1,1,3,5,\ldots$ are odd integers, $1,3,5, \ldots$ are odd positive integers. What can be simpler than this?