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Liu Hui (c. 3rd century) established rules for adding and subtracting negative numbers. [4] By the 7th century, Indian mathematicians such as Brahmagupta were describing the use of negative numbers. Islamic mathematicians further developed the rules of subtracting and multiplying negative numbers and solved problems with negative coefficients. [5]
It is also not associative, meaning that when one subtracts more than two numbers, the order in which subtraction is performed matters. Because 0 is the additive identity, subtraction of it does not change a number. Subtraction also obeys predictable rules concerning related operations, such as addition and multiplication.
The minus sign (−) has three main uses in mathematics: [16] The subtraction operator: a binary operator to indicate the operation of subtraction, as in 5 − 3 = 2. Subtraction is the inverse of addition. [1] The function whose value for any real or complex argument is the additive inverse of that argument.
In elementary mathematics, the additive inverse is often referred to as the opposite number, [3] [4] or its negative. [5] The unary operation of arithmetic negation [6] is closely related to subtraction [7] and is important in solving algebraic equations. [8] Not all sets where addition is defined have an additive inverse, such as the natural ...
In grade schools, students are sometimes taught the method of complements as a shortcut useful in mental arithmetic. [3] Subtraction is done by adding the ten's complement of the subtrahend, which is the nines' complement plus 1. The result of this addition is used when it is clear that the difference will be positive, otherwise the ten's ...
The whole numbers were synonymous with the integers up until the early 1950s. [23] [24] [25] In the late 1950s, as part of the New Math movement, [26] American elementary school teachers began teaching that whole numbers referred to the natural numbers, excluding negative numbers, while integer included the negative numbers.