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Consider this example again.
Here we subtracted a negative integer from 3 and got 8.
This seems very strange, as 3 plus 5 is also 8.
So, can we express subtraction of integers as addition?
Let’s take a look.
Compare these two statements.
You can see that the operation of subtraction is changed to addition.
And, the integer negative 5 has changed to its additive inverse positive 5.
So, we can say that the subtraction of an integer is the same as the addition of its additive inverse.
Let us see if this works for the other example as well.
Let’s try to subtract 5 from 2.
To subtract, we first change the operation of subtraction to that of addition.
Next, we replace positive 5 by its additive inverse. That is negative 5.
Now we add positive 2 and negative 5.
What is the sum of these two integers?
