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Tagged with negative-numbers undergraduate-education
3 questions
15
votes
4
answers
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Parentheses around negative numbers
We teach students that a notation like
$$17 - -59$$ is not acceptable or at least not good. Instead we want them to write $$17-(-59)$$
The main reason seems to be that it's more readable if you ...
- 159
8
votes
4
answers
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Should we rename the greater than sign?
As math teachers, sometimes we may wish that we could enter our students' minds to see how they think. In early years, while children are learning language, they build the concept of the word greater ...
- 1,167
33
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21
answers
7k
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How to explain that a negative number multiplied by a negative number is a positive number, and that $-(-x)=x$?
Actually, there is no algebraic problem to show that $-(-x) = x$. This proof can be build upon the concept of the addition of the opposite like this:
$- x + x = - x + [- ( - x) ]$, and thus by ...
- 1,167