User:Jim.belk/Draft:Negative number
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A negative number is any number that is less than zero. Such numbers are often used to represent the amount of a loss or absence. For example, a debt that is owed may be thought of as a negative asset, or a decrease in some quantity may be thought of as a negative increase. Negative numbers are also used to describe values on a scale that goes below zero, such as the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales for temperature.
Negative numbers are usually written with a minus sign in front. For example, −3 would represent a negative quantity with a magnitude of three, and would be pronounced “negative three”. In the context of negative numbers, a number that is not negative is called positive, though zero is usually thought of as neither positive nor negative. The positivity of a number may be emphasized by placing a plus sign before it, e.g. +3. In general, the negativity or positivity of a number is called referred to as its sign.
In mathematics, every real number other than zero is either positive or negative. The positive whole numbers are referred to as natural numbers, while the positive and negative whole numbers (together with zero) are referred to as integers.