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The Negative - Ship

Negative numbers were slowly accepted over many centuries. They first appeared in Chinese mathematics in the 1st century AD but were not widely accepted in Europe until the 18th century. Early Greek and Arab mathematicians rejected negative numbers as absurd because they did not represent real-world quantities. Indian mathematicians in the 7th century treated negatives as debts. Europeans began using negatives in the 16th century to represent solutions to equations, though many were still skeptical. John Wallis in the 17th century helped establish the concept of the number line, giving meaning to negative numbers. Mathematicians like Euler in the 18th century finally established negatives as legitimate numbers.

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40 views23 pages

The Negative - Ship

Negative numbers were slowly accepted over many centuries. They first appeared in Chinese mathematics in the 1st century AD but were not widely accepted in Europe until the 18th century. Early Greek and Arab mathematicians rejected negative numbers as absurd because they did not represent real-world quantities. Indian mathematicians in the 7th century treated negatives as debts. Europeans began using negatives in the 16th century to represent solutions to equations, though many were still skeptical. John Wallis in the 17th century helped establish the concept of the number line, giving meaning to negative numbers. Mathematicians like Euler in the 18th century finally established negatives as legitimate numbers.

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Ta Tran
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Alexander

Katelyn Frey

THE NEGATIVE
 Negatives not accepted until a few
hundred years ago
 Columbus discovered America nearly two
centuries before negatives were
considered numbers
 Negatives were accepted around the
middle of the 19th century , about the time
of the American Civil War
NUMBERS AROSE FROM COUNTING THINGS

5 Goats
2 Pigs

12 Coins

4 Bottles of Milk

7 Apples
FRACTIONS REPRESENTED SMALLER UNITS

½ a loaf of bread
5/8 inch

3/10 of a mile
 So if your counting and measuring, Zero must
be the smallest possible quantity ?

 After all, how can any quantity be less than


nothing ?
 Negativesfirst appeared on the scene when
people began solving equations.
For example :

 “I am seven years old and my sister is 2.


When will I be exactly twice as old as my
sister ?”
7 + x = 2 (2+x)
x – number of years from now
Answer : 3 years from now
What is the solution to the following:

18 + x = 2 (11 + x)
18 + x = 22 + 2x
-22 –x -22 -x
-4 = x
 Scribes in Egypt and Mesopotamia could solve
these equations more than 3,000 years ago, but
they never considered the possibility of negative
solutions.

 The Chinese mathematics were able to


understand and handle negative numbers.

 The Greeks, who mostly influenced Western


culture ignored negative numbers
 Thought of “numbers” as positive whole
numbers

 And that line segments, areas, and volumes


were different kinds of magnitudes. (and
therefore not numbers)
 Wrote Arithmetica, a book on solving
equations, which lead him to this equation:
4x + 20 = 4

 “This is absurd, because 4 is smaller than 20.”

 To Diophantus, 4x + 20 meant adding something to 20,


and hence could never be equal to 4.

Diophantus
BRAHMAGUPTA
 Indian mathematician

 Worked with negatives in the 7th century

 Treated positive numbers as possessions

 And negative numbers as debts

 Also created rules for adding, subtracting,


multiplying and dividing negatives
Bhaskara
 5 centuries after Brahmagupta
 Stated that the two roots of the equation :
x² - 45x = 250

 Are x = 50 and x = -5

 However, he said that -5 was not to be taken seriously


because of its inapplicability and because people had
no clear understanding of negative quantities.
Arab Mathematics

 Did not use negative numbers partly because they did not use
symbols to solve algebraic equations.
 They only used words with geometric interpretations of all
numerical data as segments or areas.
 Al-Khwarizmi recognized the quadratic equation can have
two roots but only if they were positive.
 In part, because he used the side lengths of rectangles to
solve these, which is a case where negatives make no sense.
Negative Numbers in China

 The Chinese could handle negative numbers.


 Negative numbers appeared for the first time in
China’s Nine Chapters in the period of the Han
Dynasty (202 B.C.- 220 A.D.).
 Credited with being the first to recognize and use
negative numbers.
 Used a symbol for negative numbers.
European Mathematics
 European mathematicians only learned positive numbers
from their predecessors.
 Negative numbers were still seen as “absurd” or “fictitious.”
 Fibonacci’s book Liber Abaci contained problems with negative
solutions, interpreted as debts (13th century).
 Cardano’s Ars Magna included negative solutions of equations
and also had basic laws of operating with negative numbers
(16th century).
 Used m: as a negative sign. Ex: m:2 = -2.
COMPLICATIONS IN THE 17TH CENTURY.
 Negative numbers began to be used in the European’s
work.
 Solutions of quadratic equations.
 Rene Descartes
 Antoine Arnauld (1612-1694)
 John Wallis (1616-1703)
 Arithmetica Infinitorum (1655), argued that negative numbers
were greater than infinity.
 Invented the number line, which gave meaning to negative
numbers, allowing them to be thought of in terms of direction.
 Isaac Newton’s Universal Arithmetick
 Can you justify Euler’s claim that –a times –b
should be the opposite of a times –b. What
does opposite mean in this context?
 How does part (a) imply that the product of
two negative numbers must be positive?
 How should a times –b be related to –a times
b? Why?
Acceptance in the 18 th Century
 Negatives were accepted as numbers.
 Leonhard Euler (1707-1783)
 Controversy
 Leibniz, Johann Benoulli, Euler, and d’Alembert argued
about whether log(-x) was the same as log(x).
• Maclaurin
 Treated negative numbers on the same level as positive
numbers in his A Treatise of Algebra in Three Parts.
Discussion

 Discuss among the class the reasoning


leading to Wallis’s claim that “If negative
numbers are less than zero, then they must
be greater than infinity.”
 How would you have reacted to Wallis’s
argument?
19TH CENTURY

Gauss

Galois

Abel

And others
 5th century – 3rd century B.C.E. Greece
 No indication of negative numbers
 100 B.C.E – 50 A.D. China
 Negative numbers appeared in Nine Chapters.
 3rd century A.D. Greece
 Diophantus’s Arithmetica referred to negative numbers as absurd.
 7th century A.D. India
 Negative numbers were used to represent debts.
 9th – 12th centuries A.D. Arabia
 Arabs learned of negatives from Indian mathematicians, but rejected the use of
negatives.
 Abul-Wafa (10th century) used negatives to represent debt.
 Al-Samawal (12th century) stated rules for addition, subtraction, and multiplication of
negatives.
 12th century A.D. India
 Bhaskara gave roots for quadratic equations, but said the values were not to be
accepted.
 13th century A.D. China and Italy
 China- Negative numbers were denoted by a symbol (diagonal stroke).
 Italy- Fibonacci’s book Liber Abaci contains problems that have negative solutions,
interpreted as debts.
 15th century A.D. Europe
 Chuquet was the first to use negative numbers as exponents in
Europe, referred to them as absurd.
 16th century A.D. Europe
 Cardano’s Ars Magna had negative solutions to equations, also
used a symbol (m: ) to denote a negative number.
 17th century A.D. Europe
 Wallis accepted negative numbers, but argued they were larger
than infinity.
 18th century A.D. Europe
 Maclaurin treated negative numbers on the same level as
positive numbers in his A Treatise of Algebra in Three Parts.
 19th century A.D.
 Mathematicians Gauss, Galois, Abel, and others focused on a
more abstract setting of mathematics, where negatives
numbers had use.
 Doubts of negative numbers disappeared.
Sources
 Mcdougal, . & Littell, . Retrieved 09. 07, 2009. Web site:
http://www.classzone.com/books/algebra_1/page_build.cfm?content=links_app3_ch
2&ch=2.
 (2009). Negative and Non-Negative Numbers. Retrieved 09. 07, 2009, from Wikipedia.
Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_non-
negative_numbers#History.
 Rogers, L. (2008). The History of Negative Numbers. Retrieved 09. 07, 2009, from
NRICH, University of Cambridge. Web site:
http://nrich.maths.org/public/viewer.php?obj_id=5961.
 Smith, M. K. Retrieved 09. 07, 2009. Web site:
http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/mks/326K/Negnos.html
 Howard, J. (2009). Negative Numbers. Retrieved 09. 07, 2009, from NRICH,
University of Cambridge. Web site:
http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/mks/326K/Negnos.html.
 Berlinghoff, W. P. & Gouvea, F. Q. (2004). Something Less Than Nothing? Negative
Numbers. In Z. A. Karian (Ed.), Math Through the Ages (pp. 93-100). Farmington,
Maine: Oxton House Publishers.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_non-negative_numbers
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number

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