- #1
Kocur
- 12
- 0
Well, you might consider my remark to be really silly . I was thinking about subtraction of reals and the following ideas came to my mind:
From one side, we may consider subtraction to be addition of the inverse of an element, for example:
(5 - 3) - 2 = (5 + (-3)) + (-2).
This "version" of subtraction is associative and (5 + (-3)) + (-2) = 5 + ((-3) + (-2)).
On the other side, if we treat subtraction separately from the addition, it is not associative:
(5 - 3) - 2 is different from 5 - (3 - 2).
Kocur.
From one side, we may consider subtraction to be addition of the inverse of an element, for example:
(5 - 3) - 2 = (5 + (-3)) + (-2).
This "version" of subtraction is associative and (5 + (-3)) + (-2) = 5 + ((-3) + (-2)).
On the other side, if we treat subtraction separately from the addition, it is not associative:
(5 - 3) - 2 is different from 5 - (3 - 2).
Kocur.