How do you determine what is greater than or less than in negative decimals?

Answer 1

Instead of doing negative numbers I'll start with apples.

If Sara owe 5 apples to John

and Alex owe 7 apples to John

Then we can say that

Sara is -5

and

Alex is -7

Alex owe more than Sara, in other words -7 is more than -5

This first example with Sara and Alex makes sense in a way, but there is a nasty tricky cheat involved that causes error when doing the real math.

When people owe something then that is a debth. A debth is allready a negative so what was done is simply to say that 7 is greater than 5, of which it is.

One can however not do this when doing calculations on negative numbers.

We always count the largest negative number for being the least.

-7 is less than -5

the relationship between two number will allways be the same if adding or subtracting the same to/from both.

We add 10 to both and get 3 and 5.

The first number is still less than the second.

Now it makes more sense because we have both positive numbers to think about :-)

I hope this made sense :-)