this post was submitted on 11 May 2024
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i think this is a fairly reasonable gut reaction to first hearing about the "unnatural" numbers, especially considering the ways they're (typically) presented at first. it seems like kids tend to be introduced to the negative numbers by people saying things like "hey we can talk about numbers that are less 0, heres how you do arithmetic on them, be sure to remember all these rules". and when presented like that, it just seems like a bunch of new arbitrary rules that need to be memorized, for seemingly no reason.
i think there would be a lot less resistance if it was explained in a more narrative way that explained why the new numbers are useful and worth learning about. e.g.,
i think the approach above makes the addition of these new types of numbers seem a lot more reasonable, because it justifies the creation of all the various types of numbers by basically saying "there weren't enough numbers in the last number system we were using, and that made it a lot harder to do certain things"
I think the Common Core addressed this a bit.
Not sure if that stuff is still in the curriculum because a bunch of dumbass parents who will not hesitate to boast about "how bad they are at math" complained about not understanding their child's homework.
I'm pretty sure accountants invented negative numbers. They've probably been behind most basic mathematical notation progress back in the early days.
I had a math teacher that told me the number 0 was a rather late invention. Like they were doing math for a while without thinking of the concept of 0.