The Enemy of My Enemy: Strogatz Examines Negatives in Latest NYT Column

February 16, 2010

In his latest column "The Enemy of My Enemy" in Sunday's New York Times, Steven Strogatz explores our general aversion to the negative sign despite its prevalence in the world around us.

"Subtraction forces us to expand our conception of what numbers are," he writes.

While it seems logical to teach kids subtraction after addition, the possible generation of negative numbers is an abstract idea that makes many people uneasy. Strogatz lists several examples.

"The history books tell us that Julius Caesar was born in 100 B.C., not –100," Strogatz writes. "The subterranean levels in a parking garage often have names like B1 and B2."

More unsettling than abstract negative numbers, Strogatz says, is the rule that a negative times a negative is a positive.

"Life sometimes seems to play by different rules," he writes. "In conventional morality, two wrongs don’t make a right. Likewise, double negatives don’t always amount to positives; they can make negatives more intense."

After giving a step-by-step explanation of the process, Strogatz lists several examples, from gene regulation to relationships among people and even countries, to demonstrate how the real world mirrors the rules of negative numbers.

Read the full column here.