Chat with our AI personalities
No! Nor did the Romans figure the concept of negative numbers.
The concept of an opposite is simple. The opposite of a number is a negative. For example, the opposite of 35 is -35.
Natural numbers, which were around before the concept of negative numbers
3--16=
subtraction is merely adding a negative number, so subtracting a negative number is adding the negative of a negative number. It should be pointed out that while most people find this concept obvious, it was not obvious to ancient mathematicians. In fact, as late as the 1800s, most mathematicians thought that negative numbers were nonsense.