Dismissing the “owed” terminology, integers of either sign represent displacement from 0. The sign indicates the “direction” of displacement. They’re 1-dimensional vectors. +7 and -7 are 1-dimensional vectors with magnitude 7 (||7||), but different directions. So, from the perspective of linear algebra, both positive and negative *n *are types of a vector with ||n||.
… a fine basis for writing “positive ||7||” and “negative ||7||”
Thanks for responding! I guess I understand your dad’s thinking. 3i is an imaginary number, but I wouldn’t call it “imaginary 3.”
But I personally don’t have a problem with pronouncing “–1” as either “minus one” or “negative one,” and I will continue to use both pretty much interchangeably.
If you join me in my pointless crusade to tell everyone there is no number called “Oh”, then yes! I’ll join you on your pointless crusade!
What? You mean we have to change the lyrics to Jenny?
[Heisenberg]
You’re goddamned right!
[/Heisenberg]
ISWYDT, but nonetheless, that’s what’s known as “waaaay too cold to fuck.”
I remember the old Chicago city vehicle stickers used to have the number names written out below the numbers on the sticker. For whatever reason, “0” was spelled out as “cipher.” Does anyone know if this harkens back to some old tradition or something? That’s the only context I can remember seeing “0” referred to as “cipher.”
Yes, “cipher” is an old word for zero. It actually comes from the same Arabic word as “zero” does. Arabic sifr became Latin cifra, French cifre and then English cipher, while sifr meanwhile took another route, becoming Latin zephirum, Italian zero and English zero.
You obviously missed the thread a few years ago where I warned western Canadian Dopers that it was going to hit 45 overnight. The grief I got from non-Canadians! “You always need to use a minus sign when it’s below zero!”
The Canadian Dopers, particularly my fellow Saskatchewanians, defended me. Up here, once you hit late November, the “minus” is presumed. What’s exceptional is if it’s *above * zero!
“Hey, everyone! It’s January seventh and it’s plus 4!”
“W00t! Awesome, eh?”
This prompts me to ask, what do you call the “-” sign and it’s opposite, “+”?
If I were someone who worked with electricity, I’d probably refer to them as “negative” and “positive” even when I was talking about other things.
But if I were an accountant I might switch back and forth in my work, sometimes calling it “minus” and “plus,” other times “positive” and “negative.”
Hockey has a statistic known as “plus/minus.” Does that carry over to everyday use?
What would you say if you’re an accountant who grew up playing hockey responding to an invitation to a physics lecture that you will attend and also bring an unnamed guest?
I call them “minus sign” and “plus sign”. Those are also their official Unicode names. It sounds odd to me to call them “negative sign” and “positive sign”, and even odder to the point of incorrectness to call them merely “negative” and “positive” (as nouns). I’m not finding any dictionary that endorses that usage.
I would never bring just one unnamed guest, I would always take a priest a rabbi and a duck.
During my drive home yesterday evening, the radio host gave a weather update. It was something like “It’s 22 at O’hare but the windchill makes if feel like 12 …above zero.” It was an understandable thing to say given the temps this week.
It’s no longer sufficient to report the weather, apparently the market dictates that the most exciting weather forecast will get the ratings. Hence the constant hyperbole about windchill adjustments.
So it seems to me that the weather reports should use Fahrenheit for high temperatures, and Centigrade for low temperatures. Then the extremes will always involve the absolute value of the numbers getting bigger and sounding more exciting.
This may not be salient, but “negative temperature” (never minus temperature! Negative as in negative numbers) may refer to a (typically thermodynamically impossible in familiar cases) state whose temperature is below absolute zero.
That’s nothing new, though. I remember it from back in the 80s. And, to me, it does serve a useful purpose and makes a difference as to what I wear. I suppose you could also just report air temperature and wind speeds. Same diff.
I think the pedagogical choice to teach kids in elementary to distinguish between “negative” and “minus” was rooted in issues kids have with notation like -7+5. “Minus seven? What is it minus of!” Using a different notation help with that.
And then that became “how things should be” because a) a lot of math education at the lowest level is taught by people who don’t understand math beyond what the book tells them to teach, b) the same kids who find -7+5 confusing also find it confusing if teachers at higher levels don’t follow the exact conventions they learned in elementary school.
Of course this is coming from someone whose native language doesn’t have the “negative 7” construction at all, so take it for what it’s worth.
That’s what happens in the UK, it’s about the only time Farenheit is used these days.
It’s bizarre, but it’s the way my mind works - I find it more natural to grok low temperatures in Celsius, but high temperatures in Fahrenheit. I don’t know if it’s common for other people in the U.K.? I grew up there during the transition period, and it was much easier to pick up on the zero=freezing reference point; but I could never quite drop the cultural baggage of warm temperatures being “in the 70s” or “in the 80s”.