In math, we get to make up anything we want, and then reason from it. If you don't believe me, you just haven't studied enough higher math. What is important is whether it is consistent and useful.

Well, I did study higher maths. And your argumentation is basically right. For example, if you ask how much is 2+2? one should reply it depends. Why? Because you ain't saying anything about the base on which respect you are calculating the result (e.g., 2+2=0 in the weird 4-based Z(4) numerical system -the integers modulo 4).

But we ain't talking about higher mathematics here, that's plain algebra in the old 10-based numerical system Z, the dear old integer mathematics we studied in the early years of the school, where my teacher used to hit me on my face if I wrote a negative reminder (or one that was too big). And in dear old mathematics the modulus is always positive.

Ciao!
--bronto

Update: thanks to Enlil for pointing errors around; fixed (hopefully :-)

The very nature of Perl to be like natural language--inconsistant and full of dwim and special cases--makes it impossible to know it all without simply memorizing the documentation (which is not complete or totally correct anyway).
--John M. Dlugosz

In reply to Re: Re: Modulus Inconsistencies (Or Calling all Mathematicians) by bronto
in thread Modulus Inconsistencies (Or Calling all Mathematicians) by RollyGuy

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.