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From: bart <bc@freeuk.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Integral types and own type definitions (was Re: Suggested method
 for returning a string from a C program?)
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2025 20:06:02 +0000
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On 27/03/2025 19:31, Keith Thompson wrote:
> James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> writes:
>> On 3/26/25 05:59, Keith Thompson wrote:
>>> David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> writes:
>>> [...]
>>>> Sure. But most people have forgotten such details long ago - negative
>>>> numbers are not part of daily life (except as an indicator of how much
>>>> you owe the bank...). After all, negative numbers are not natural!
>>>
>>> Most people understand credits and debits.
>>  From my experience, most do not. In particular, if you gave them
>> examples of a transaction and the relevant accounts, they would have no
>> idea which accounts should be debited, and which should be credited.
> 
> Sure, most people don't understand double-entry bookkeepping.  I was
> thinking of simpler concepts.  Depositing money increases your bank
> account balance, withdrawing money decreases it, withdrawing too
> much can result in a negative balance, and so on.  A checking account
> or credit card statement shows numbers with or without a "-" symbol.
> 
> Most of us here are probably in the top 10% of the general population
> in terms of mathematical knowledge, and it can be difficult to know
> how much knowledge most people have.  But I think that most people
> have a decent basic understanding of positive and negative numbers.
> As I mentioned recently, temperatures might have been a better
> example.
> 
> And this is *way* off-topic.
> 

That didn't stop you having your say first /then/ declaring it as way 
off-topic!