You may have learned that the lowest number is zero. But did you know that there are numbers lower than zero? Yes! These are called negative numbers.
A positive number is any number greater than zero. A negative number is any number lesser than zero. The lesser than zero the number is, the more negative it becomes.
To help you understand the concept of negative and positive numbers, think of someone who has a bank account. If the person has zero dollars in the bank, then that person has neither a positive nor a negative amount in the bank. If that same person deposits ten dollars into their savings account, then that person has a positive value: +10 dollars in the bank.
But let’s say that the person withdraws the ten dollars and then takes a loan of 10 dollars. He adds the ten dollars loan to the ten dollars he withdrew from his savings accounts and buys a bicycle.
Now, this individual not only has no money in the bank, but he also owes the bank 10 dollars. He therefore has less than zero dollars in the bank. He has ten dollars less than zero. Therefore he has -10 dollars in the bank.
Just as positive numbers stretch upwards to infinity, so negative numbers stretch downwards to infinity. In other words, there are an infinite number of “negative numbers” and an infinite number of “positive numbers.”
Negative numbers has no real value. They denote a loss. They bigger the negative number, the greater the loss.