poll results so far spoilers re: our answer
so far it looks like the majority of people agree with us on this, but there's sufficient disagreement that this phrasing should probably be avoided in favor of something more unambiguous
-F
@Felthry I hate "larger/smaller" terminology for negative numbers; we almost always say "more/less negative" to sidetrack it
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our answer
@Felthry same.
ours re: our answer
@Felthry *nods*
Our mathematical intuition says "smaller" = "more negative"; our physical intuition says "smaller" = "lesser in magnitude"
...which is basically why we avoid saying either.
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our answer
@Felthry I agree. To talk about direction along the line I'd use the words "lower/higher" or "lesser/greater"
re: our answer
@socks honestly slightly surprised! the impression we got is that the Official Mathematical Convention™, such as it exists, is that smaller/larger are always synonymous with lesser/greater, and we assumed that you, being a mathematician, would probably follow that convention
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re: our answer
@Felthry It is the convention but it's counterintuitive so I don't like it!
re: our answer
@socks it seems a lot of people find it counterintuitive going by the results so far! probably best to avoid that wording, like you said
-F
@Felthry tbh, neither - i'd always say "-1000 is much lower than -5"
@thamesynne @Felthry ooo, "lower" is much more elegant than our "more negative" - we might steal that.
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our answer
we think of words like "smaller" or "larger" in the context of numbers to refer to the magnitude of the number, not absolute directions on a number line
-F