title: How to subtract a constant number from a column
body: <p>Is there a way to subtract the smallest value from all the values of a column? I need to subtract the first number in the 1st column from all other numbers in the first column.</p>
  
  <p>I wrote this script, but it's not giving the right result:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$ awk '{$1 = $1 - 1280449530}' file 
  1280449530 452
  1280449531 2434
  1280449531 2681
  1280449531 2946
  1280449531 1626
  1280449532 3217
  1280449532 4764
  1280449532 4501
  1280449532 3372
  1280449533 4129
  1280449533 6937
  1280449533 6423
  1280449533 4818
  1280449534 4850
  1280449534 8980
  1280449534 8078
  1280449534 6788
  1280449535 5587
  1280449535 10879
  1280449535 9920
  1280449535 8146
  1280449536 6324
  1280449536 12860
  1280449536 11612
  </code></pre>