title: working with negative numbers in python
body: <p>I am a student in a concepts of programming class. The lab is run by a TA and today in lab he gave us a real simple little program to build. It was one where it would multiply by addition. Anyway, he had us use absolute to avoid breaking the prog with negatives. I whipped it up real quick and then argued with him for 10 minutes that it was bad math. It was, 4 * -5 does not equal 20, it equals -20. He said that he really dosen't care about that and that it would be too hard to make the prog handle the negatives anyway. So my question is how do I go about this.</p>
  
  <p>here is the prog I turned in:</p>
  
  <pre><code>#get user input of numbers as variables
  
  numa, numb = input("please give 2 numbers to multiply seperated with a comma:")
  
  #standing variables
  total = 0
  count = 0
  
  #output the total
  while (count&lt; abs(numb)):
      total = total + numa
      count = count + 1
  
  #testing statements
  if (numa, numb &lt;= 0):
      print abs(total)
  else:
      print total
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I want to do it without absolutes, but every time I input negative numbers I get a big fat goosegg. I know there is some simple way to do it, I just can't find it. </p>