Subtraction

There were reasons to not include a page on subtraction. When you get further into math the emphasis will be on Addition and Multiplication.

• Instead of subtracting a positive you can add a negative.
• Instead of dividing by a value you can multiply by its reciprocal.

But there is a magic to subtraction that is important to what we want to accomplish in Vectoreverything. You will see it several times. It shows itself when we do a definite integration.

Let g(x) = f(x) + c

Calculate g(b) – g(a):

[f(b) + c] – [f(a) + c]

f(b) + c – f(a) – c

f(b) – f(a)

The subtraction made the constant disappear.