>>12316541To further this with a food analogy.
Lets say I owe 3 different people 2 snickers each. In practice this is 3*-2, because I will be -6 snicker bars at the end of this exchange.
However, lets say 3 different people each owe me 2 snicker bars now. In this case -3 * -2 = 6 because I will be up 6 snicker bars.
Now, if you are anything like my dog you're probably wondering why those negatives appear in certain places, so let me describe them to you.
In this case the 2 represents the amount of snicker bars. When I owe someone else snickers bars, snickers will be leaving my inventory thus it becomes a negative because it is being removed from my stock.
a -2 means that I will be losing 2 snickers.
The 3 here is a representation of people who will be exchanging snickers. a positive 3 indicates that I will be giving 3 people snickers bars, however because they will be giving me snickers this gets negated and becomes a -3. While this might seem counter intuitive at first, it makes sense because what I'm talking about is my exchange toward others. A positive exchange indicates that the direction of the change is from me to them. a Negative exchange indicates that the direction is from them to me.
Thus the base case would be 3 * 2, where 3 people are exchanging 2 snickers from me, resulting in a net positive of 6 snickers.
The negative debt owed would be 3 * -2 , where 3 people are exchanging -2 snickers from me, resulting in a net positive of -6 snickers.
The double negative would be -3 * -2, where -3 people are exchanging -2 snickers to me, resulting in a net positive of 6 snickers for me.
