maximum and minimum value: how can the maximum be less than zero?

[Illvoices]

so ive got a question and that is how come you have a number less than 0 for the maximum value when maximum mean the greatest amount














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[ksdhart2]

You're correct that the maximum value is the greatest amount or highest value recorded in a given sample, but there's nothing stopping that highest value from being below 0. As you know, some negative numbers have greater values than other negative numbers. For instance, -57 is a greater value than -62. All that the maximum value being negative means is that the values never got above 0. Consider this fictional data set, measuring the low temperatures, in degrees celsius, over the past 10 days:

Day of January | Low temperature

21 | -4
22 | -4
23 | -2
24 | -1
25 | -2
26 | -3
27 | -6
28 | -8
29 | -6
30 | -7

If you graph this data, using "Day of January" as your x-values, and "Low temperature" as your y-values, you'll see that there must be a maximum value, even though the temperature never went above 0.