WebMath: standard notation for negative numbers?

[S.J.Johnston-Wilder at open.ac.uk]

The UK national curriculum documents use the same sign for both.
This appears to cause confusion in many cases.

Many calculators distinguish by using (-) for negative and users seem to
find this helpful.

Sue JW
Sue Johnston-Wilder
Centre for Mathematics Education
The Open University
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
Tel: 01908 652324


-----Original Message-----
From: Pam Bishop [mailto:bishopp at for.mat.bham.ac.uk]
Sent: 22 July 2002 11:39
To: webmath at camel.math.ca
Subject: WebMath: standard notation for negative numbers?


Is there an international standard in notation for negative numbers?  One 
enquirer has asked:

"Personally, I have been brought up differentiating between 'negative seven'

and 'subtract seven' through the former being a 'raised' sign compared with
the 
subtraction sign.  However, is this 'standard' world-wide or is there no
agreed 
standard?  I note on several web sites that often a raised sign is not used
for 
'negative' and a 'subtraction' sign is used instead.  However, I don't know 
whether that is because that is standard in that country or whether they are

just being 'lazy' (also, of course, the issue of computers may make people
not 
bother using a raised sign as it is not as easy to produce on a computer as
a 
standard subtraction sign).  Of course, it may well be the case that there
is 
no standard at all."

Comments welcome - Pam






===============================================================

Pam Bishop, Assistant Director
LTSN Maths, Stats & OR Network   
School of Mathematics and Statistics    p.bishop at bham.ac.uk
The University of Birmingham            tel 0121-414 4800
Birmingham  B15 2TT                     fax 0121-414 3389
                                                             
The Maths, Stats & OR Network is part of the Learning and Teaching 
Support Network, which provides discipline-based support for 
learning and teaching in UK universities.
 
More information can be found at http://ltsn.mathstore.ac.uk
===============================================================
-----------------------------------------------------------------
WebMath at mail.math.ca - WebMath Mailing List
To unsubscribe:
via Web:     http://camel.math.ca/cgi-bin/wcms/webmath.pl
via e-mail:  send message a to majordomo at mail.math.ca with
"unsubscribe webmath" in the BODY of message
List Archives: http://camel.math.ca/mail/webmath/
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
WebMath at mail.math.ca - WebMath Mailing List
To unsubscribe:
via Web:     http://camel.math.ca/cgi-bin/wcms/webmath.pl
via e-mail:  send message a to majordomo at mail.math.ca with
"unsubscribe webmath" in the BODY of message
List Archives: http://camel.math.ca/mail/webmath/
-----------------------------------------------------------------