Topic

There are some cases where subtraction as a separate operation becomes problematic. For example, 3 − (−2) (i.e. subtract −2 from 3) is not immediately obvious from either a natural number view or a number line view, because it is not immediately clear what it means to move −2 steps to the left or to take away −2 apples. One solution is to view subtraction as addition of signed numbers. Extra minus signs simply denote additive inversion. Then we have 3 − (−2) = 3 + 2 = 5. This also helps to keep the ring of integers "simple" by avoiding the introduction of "new" operators such as subtraction. Ordinarily a ring only has two operations defined on it; in the case of the integers, these are addition and multiplication. A ring already has the concept of additive inverses, but it does not have any notion of a separate subtraction operation, so the use of signed addition as subtraction allows us to apply the ring axioms to subtraction without needing to prove anything.