Episode 1372
Subtraction
Thu, 2021-Feb-04 00:29 UTC
Length - 3:16
Direct Link
Welcome to random Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of a random Wikipedia page every day.
The random article for Thursday, 4 February 2021 is Subtraction.
Subtraction is an arithmetic operation that represents the operation of removing objects from a collection. The result of a subtraction is called a difference. Subtraction is signified by the minus sign, −. For example, in the adjacent picture, there are 5 − 2 apples—meaning 5 apples with 2 taken away, resulting in a total of 3 apples. Therefore, the difference of 5 and 2 is 3, that is, 5 − 2 = 3. While primarily associated with natural numbers in arithmetic, subtraction can also represent removing or decreasing physical and abstract quantities using different kinds of objects including negative numbers, fractions, irrational numbers, vectors, decimals, functions, and matrices. Subtraction follows several important patterns. It is anticommutative, meaning that changing the order changes the sign of the answer. It is also not associative, meaning that when one subtracts more than two numbers, the order in which subtraction is performed matters. Because 0 is the additive identity, subtraction of it does not change a number. Subtraction also obeys predictable rules concerning related operations, such as addition and multiplication. All of these rules can be proven, starting with the subtraction of integers and generalizing up through the real numbers and beyond. General binary operations that follow these patterns are studied in abstract algebra.
Performing subtraction on natural numbers is one of the simplest numerical tasks. Subtraction of very small numbers is accessible to young children. In primary education for instance, students are taught to subtract numbers in the decimal system, starting with single digits and progressively tackling more difficult problems.
In advanced algebra and in computer algebra, an expression involving subtraction like A − B is generally treated as a shorthand notation for the addition A + (−B). Thus, A − B contains two terms, namely A and −B. This allows an easier use of associativity and commutativity.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:29 UTC on Thursday, 4 February 2021.
For the full current version of the article, see Subtraction on Wikipedia.
This podcast is produced by Abulsme Productions based on Wikipedia content and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
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This has been Brian Standard. Thank you for listening to random Wiki of the Day.
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