Is -3 a rational, irrational, natural, whole, integer or real number?

1 Answer
Jul 1, 2015

-3 is an integer (and thus also rational and real)

Explanation:

natural or whole numbers (the terms are generally considered synonymous) are non-negative "counting numbers". Occasionally they are denoted by the symbol NN. There are some differences in definitions which sometimes include 0 and sometimes exclude 0 from NN.

-3 is negative so it is not a natural or whole number.

integers are natural numbers extended to include negative versions of all the natural numbers (and 0 if it were excluded by the "natural number definition"). The normal symbol for integers is ZZ

-3 obviously falls in this category.

Rational numbers are numbers that can be expressed as a fraction or ratio of two integers. Rational numbers are denoted QQ.

Since -3 can be written as (-3)/1, it could be argued that -3 is also a real number.

Irrational numbers are numbers that can not be expressed as a ratio (or fraction) of two integers but could represent a linear distance.

Real numbers are a union of both rational and irrational numbers