Unary minus precedence preference

[dm319]

I guess it depends on perspective (I'm not sure I really believe all this, but let me be the devils advocate for a moment)...

(06-04-2024 09:20 PM)Johnh Wrote:  It's getting cold down here in Australia, the temperature outside is about -2 degrees C this morning.

Sure, but this is a fabrication of the way we measure. Temperature as the movement of atoms ranges from nothing to a lot. -2 is just 2 less than an arbitrary amount.

(06-04-2024 09:20 PM)Johnh Wrote:  And our dollar is down too, about -1% against the USD.

Two positive values change from one day to the next in relation to each other. Sure the sign is useful to tell us how which way they change day by day, but arguably there isn't a negative AU$ - just real money owed in a different direction.

(06-04-2024 09:20 PM)Johnh Wrote:  But I'll be working today, my leave balance at work is -6 days, since I took a vacation a couple of months ago.

While using negative numbers is useful here, there isn't really such a thing as a negative day. You owe an extra 6 whole days to your employer to keep them happy. It's nice to use positive/negative to describe the flow of things one way or another, but they are just whole things moving one way or another. If I owe you 6 apples, I don't actually have 6 anti-apples.

(06-04-2024 09:20 PM)Johnh Wrote:  I'll be working on some LRC circuits, for which the impedance of my 220uF capacitors at 110hZ is -6.6i.

I don't know a lot of things. Impedance is one of those things. And imaginary numbers I guess Maybe negative numbers...