![]() Which means we're pretty close to our starting point, just 2 steps away. What if we had faced backwards and took 6 steps? Which gives us 14 steps from our starting point. ![]() Now, let's say we want to keep facing forward and take 6 more steps. The "+" means "facing forward" and "8" means "8 steps in the direction you're facing". You're facing forward, and take 8 steps forward. Addition and subtraction are related, but slightly different, than positive and negative numbers. Great question! I had to think about it for a bit. After thinking of a better intuition, here was my reply: I've long internalized negatives as "opposite" and subtraction as "opposite of addition" so in my head, I had a notion of "opposite of opposite of addition" which simplifies down to "addition".īut that inner verbalization was still pretty abstract. Maybe someone can weigh in whether it's correct in a technical context to say "negative" over "minus.A math teacher recently asked how to explain the concept of subtracting negative numbers to her class. I don't see any reason to recommend against "negative," although if you're unsure, you could prefer "minus." That said, "negative" is not wrong, and unlike a word like "inflammable," you're unlikely to be misunderstood if you use. "Minus" is indeed what most North Americans and all Brits say. spoken, fiction, magazines, newspapers, and academic).'' It has 15 hits for MINUS * DEGREES and none at all for NEGATIVE * DEGREES indicating "negative" is at least an Americanism. Like the CCAE, the BNC has entries from ``a wide range of genres (e.g. I can't link to the search directly, but here's a link to the COCA home page to look it up for yourself. ![]() At some point, I'd like to map the hits to see if there are areal tendencies. On the other hand, it has only 13 hits for NEGATIVE * DEGREES. It has 140 hits for MINUS * DEGREES, from 2 to 459, in both numbers and words. The CCAE has tokens from both written and spoken English. I'm forced to conclude "minus" is indeed the standard, and "negative" an acceptable variation.
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