Newsgroup etiquette

On 27/03/2025 19:31, Keith Thompson wrote:
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James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> writes:
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On 3/26/25 05:59, Keith Thompson wrote:
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David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> writes:
[...]
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Sure.  But most people have forgotten such details long ago -
negative numbers are not part of daily life (except as an
indicator of how much you owe the bank...).  After all,
negative numbers are not natural!

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Most people understand credits and debits.

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 From my experience, most do not.  In particular, if you gave
them examples of a transaction and the relevant accounts, they
would have no idea which accounts should be debited, and which
should be credited.

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Sure, most people don't understand double-entry bookkeepping.  I
was thinking of simpler concepts.  Depositing money increases
your bank account balance, withdrawing money decreases it,
withdrawing too much can result in a negative balance, and so on.
A checking account or credit card statement shows numbers with or
without a "-" symbol.
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Most of us here are probably in the top 10% of the general
population in terms of mathematical knowledge, and it can be
difficult to know how much knowledge most people have.  But I
think that most people have a decent basic understanding of
positive and negative numbers.  As I mentioned recently,
temperatures might have been a better example.
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And this is *way* off-topic.

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That didn't stop you having your say first /then/ declaring it
as way off-topic!