Friday, February 8, 2008

Part 1: Thoughts of “How we do?”

Thoughts of “How we do?”


Thoughts of “How we do?”

Let we start with one example. Hope most of you familiar with mathematical subtraction with negative numbers. “What is the result if we subtract minus one from minus one?” It is well-known that any school student can answer this question.

First let us represent in a mathematical formula as follows:

-1 - -1

We all agree the answer is zero. But the next question here is why or how you get this answer.

We definitely have to understand how we got the answer for above question, because this is not only one problem we need to solve. We have to resolve lot of same kind of problem in future, so understanding how we solve a particular problem is very much important people like engineers since their day to day responsible is providing solutions.

Let check the way how we can get the answer for the above question mathematically. First the value -1 is really unknown. It is something we can’t identify as a physical object. So definitely we have to change it to positive number to make our brain to visualize.

So we can start with right side operand -1, and we can first operate that with the minus sign and will get following expression.

-1 + 1

Now looks we are near to the solution. And the result should be zero.

Here is there any other way to get the answer to the above question? Yes, just check the following formula with a small change.

(-1) - (-1)

So can you identify the any different way to solve the same formula? If not, let represent (-1) with x.

X – X

Yes we subtract the same values so that should be zero.

So, don’t you surprise from the way we got the answer. Or couldn’t you understand the different between the ways of how we identify the answer.

Let us think the what leads us to think the second solution, it should be different from our usual thinking.


தமிழ் விரும்பி said...

Hi, I dont know this is small problem or big one. Eventhough, you are going to say something. So, continue ur thougts ASAP. Bcz every persons have different thinking power. That is why they are differ from each other. Welcome Nimalan. Continue yourself!!!

Duwaraka Kanendran said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ramanc said...

simple and elegance model. sometime we forget to use childhood mathematics once at position as Great Engineer.