Comment Re:wow... (Score 1) 519
I think I remember a teacher saying it can all be broken down to addition; because subtraction is just reverse addition, multiplication is just shorthand addition, and division is shorthand subtraction. There may have been more to the explanation but that was 10 years ago.
This is true in some sense, false in some sense, and meaningless in some sense.
On one hand, the entire real number line can be derived from the peano axioms, which are essentially just addition (actually more basic than addition, because they are the rules for adding 1). On the other hand, addition the operation doesn't do everything by itself. For example: you can't get the rational numbers from addition without first developing multiplication, so multiplication is on some level more than just shorthand addition.
This is true in some sense, false in some sense, and meaningless in some sense.
On one hand, the entire real number line can be derived from the peano axioms, which are essentially just addition (actually more basic than addition, because they are the rules for adding 1). On the other hand, addition the operation doesn't do everything by itself. For example: you can't get the rational numbers from addition without first developing multiplication, so multiplication is on some level more than just shorthand addition.
