aka “negative fractions have never show’d up in my math classes until today but apparently I’m already supposed to know what they are”
In: 4
A fraction is just a type of number. It may help to think of 2/3 as a *thing in and of itself* in the same way that “2” or “-17” are, not as “two thirds of something”, in this context (and in many others, because that way of thinking about fractions falls apart quickly once you start doing algebra).
In the same way that you can add two numbers, you can add two fractions, because fractions are just numbers. Similarly, in the same way you can subtract, multiply, or divide numbers, you can subtract, multiply, or divide fractions. And you can take their negatives, which has the same meaning for fractions that it does for integers: -1/2 is the number that, if you add it to 1/2, gives you zero, in the same way that -3 is the number that, if you add it to 3, gives you zero.
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