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miradulo
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This is pretty soft, but I saw an analogy online to explain this once.

If you film someonea man running forwards ($+$) and then play the film forward ($+$) he is still running forward ($+$). If you play the film backward ($-$) he appears to be running backwards ($-$) so the result of multiplying a positive and a negative is negative. Same goes for if you film a guyman running backwards ($-$) and play it normally ($+$) he appears to be still running backwards ($-$). Now, if you film a guyman running backwards ($-$) and play it backwards ($-$) he appears to be running forward ($+$). The level to which you speed up the rewind doesn't matter ($-3x$ or $-4x$) these results hold true. $$\text{backward} \times \text{backward} = \text{forward}$$ $$ \text{negative} \times \text{negative} = \text{positive}$$ It's not perfect, but it introduces the notion of the number line having directions at least.

This is pretty soft, but I saw an analogy online to explain this once.

If you film someone running forwards ($+$) and then play the film forward ($+$) he is still running forward ($+$). If you play the film backward ($-$) he appears to be running backwards ($-$) so the result of multiplying a positive and a negative is negative. Same goes for if you film a guy running backwards ($-$) and play it normally ($+$) he appears to be still running backwards ($-$). Now, if you film a guy running backwards ($-$) and play it backwards ($-$) he appears to be running forward ($+$). The level to which you speed up the rewind doesn't matter ($-3x$ or $-4x$) these results hold true. $$\text{backward} \times \text{backward} = \text{forward}$$ $$ \text{negative} \times \text{negative} = \text{positive}$$ It's not perfect, but it introduces the notion of the number line having directions at least.

This is pretty soft, but I saw an analogy online to explain this once.

If you film a man running forwards ($+$) and then play the film forward ($+$) he is still running forward ($+$). If you play the film backward ($-$) he appears to be running backwards ($-$) so the result of multiplying a positive and a negative is negative. Same goes for if you film a man running backwards ($-$) and play it normally ($+$) he appears to be still running backwards ($-$). Now, if you film a man running backwards ($-$) and play it backwards ($-$) he appears to be running forward ($+$). The level to which you speed up the rewind doesn't matter ($-3x$ or $-4x$) these results hold true. $$\text{backward} \times \text{backward} = \text{forward}$$ $$ \text{negative} \times \text{negative} = \text{positive}$$ It's not perfect, but it introduces the notion of the number line having directions at least.

Post Merged (destination) from math.stackexchange.com/questions/1519654/…
Source Link
miradulo
  • 3.9k
  • 2
  • 23
  • 29

This is pretty soft, but I saw an analogy online to explain this once.

If you film someone running forwards ($+$) and then play the film forward ($+$) he is still running forward ($+$). If you play the film backward ($-$) he appears to be running backwards ($-$) so the result of multiplying a positive and a negative is negative. Same goes for if you film a guy running backwards ($-$) and play it normally ($+$) he appears to be still running backwards ($-$). Now, if you film a guy running backwards ($-$) and play it backwards ($-$) he appears to be running forward ($+$). The level to which you speed up the rewind doesn't matter ($-3x$ or $-4x$) these results hold true. $$\text{backward} \times \text{backward} = \text{forward}$$ $$ \text{negative} \times \text{negative} = \text{positive}$$ It's not perfect, but it introduces the notion of the number line having directions at least.