Negative numbers. A negative number is any number whose value is less than zero .
They began to be used to represent losses, debts, decreases or decreases, among other things.
They are represented by adding a minus sign in front of them: −1; −2.5; −3, and read minus one, minus two comma five, minus three.
They are found in the set of rational numbers within the integers .
Summary
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- 1
- 2 Everyday examples:
- 3 Source
- 4 References
Background.
Despite the fact that at present negative numbers can be found representing different situations in everyday life, it is known that their appearance was much later than that of fractional numbers .
Such an appearance required the existence of zero, which was something foreign to many ancient cultures such as the Egyptians , Romans and Greeks .
The first to use zero was the ancient Hindu civilization, although there was another ancient civilization that knew it in the western hemisphere, the Mayans .
Among the Indians, the postulation of the existence of the neutral or zero was reached first, while when a subtraction decreased beyond what was possible for the positive amounts, a loss or debt was produced, which corresponds to our concept of negative.
Negative quantities have been used in China and India since ancient times, for them, Mathematics served not only to represent quantities of concrete things or distances between objects, but also to represent universal laws that governed both the material and spiritual worlds. For the Chinese, the World was a constant movement in search of balance between opposite phenomena.
Everyday examples:
Natural numbers and fractional numbers are used to solve various situations in practical life. If we want to measure the heights of mountains and depths of the pits and chasms, we consider the level of the drink .
In the case of Pico Turquino it has a height of 1,974 m and the Eastern Trench has a depth of 7,239 m.
In cases like this it is necessary to consider lengths in opposite directions with respect to a given reference level. To establish a difference between these lengths, a sign is used to distinguish them.
Then, in the case of Pico Turquino it is said to be 1,974 m and the Eastern Trench is – 7,239 m (with respect to sea level).
If we want to represent two cars that have started from the same point, but in opposite (opposite) directions on a straight path, and after a certain time, car A has traveled 5 km and car B has traveled 3 km, to differentiate the direction of both displacements we can use the sign – (minus).
In general, on a horizontal line and from a point on it, the quantities taken in one direction are considered positive and those taken in the opposite direction as negative.
By convention, the quantities taken to the right and the ones taken to the left from a given point are considered positive.
On the number line the turning point is zero , on the right are the positive values, on the left are the negative quantities
