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Negative number. This thermometer is indicating a negative Fahrenheit temperature (−4 °F). In mathematics, a negative number represents an opposite. [1] In the real number system, a negative number is a number that is less than zero. Negative numbers are often used to represent the magnitude of a loss or deficiency.
In mathematics and computer programming, the order of operations is a collection of rules that reflect conventions about which operations to perform first in order to evaluate a given mathematical expression. These rules are formalized with a ranking of the operations. The rank of an operation is called its precedence, and an operation with a ...
The simplest example given by Thimbleby of a possible problem when using an immediate-execution calculator is 4 × (−5). As a written formula the value of this is −20 because the minus sign is intended to indicate a negative number, rather than a subtraction, and this is the way that it would be interpreted by a formula calculator.
Floor function. Ceiling function. In mathematics, the floor function is the function that takes as input a real number x, and gives as output the greatest integer less than or equal to x, denoted ⌊x⌋ or floor (x). Similarly, the ceiling function maps x to the smallest integer greater than or equal to x, denoted ⌈x⌉ or ceil (x).
Negative-base systems can accommodate all the same numbers as standard place-value systems, but both positive and negative numbers are represented without the use of a minus sign (or, in computer representation, a sign bit); this advantage is countered by an increased complexity of arithmetic operations. The need to store the information ...
In mathematics, the result of the modulo operation is an equivalence class, and any member of the class may be chosen as representative; however, the usual representative is the least positive residue, the smallest non-negative integer that belongs to that class (i.e., the remainder of the Euclidean division). [2]
The absolute value of a number may be thought of as its distance from zero. In mathematics, the absolute value or modulus of a real number , denoted , is the non-negative value of without regard to its sign. Namely, if is a positive number, and if is negative (in which case negating makes positive), and . For example, the absolute value of 3 is ...
The imaginary unit or unit imaginary number ( i) is a solution to the quadratic equation x2 + 1 = 0. Although there is no real number with this property, i can be used to extend the real numbers to what are called complex numbers, using addition and multiplication. A simple example of the use of i in a complex number is 2 + 3i.