In a sense, the addition/subtraction acts as a verb ("face forward" or "face backward"), and the positive/negative acts as an adjective ("regular steps" or "backwards steps"). What if we had faced backwards but walked backwards 6 steps?Īh! The addition/subtraction tells us which way to face, and the positive/negative tells us if our steps will be forward or backward (regardless of the way we're facing). 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.
#NEGATIVE MINUS NEGATIVE EQUAL POSITIVE HOW TO#
A math teacher recently asked how to explain the concept of subtracting negative numbers to her class.
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