Additive inverse
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Foxtrot (talk | contribs) at 07:36, October 5, 2008. It may differ significantly from current revision.
The additive inverse of a complex or real number x is the number y such that x and y add to equal the additive identity, the number zero. The additive inverse is a function defined for all complex numbers, and is cyclical with period 2 (idempotent). However, for this function to exist, one must first accept the existence of the negative numbers. This was a large impedence to early mathematics, because early people had difficulty imagining something less than nothing.