wallis rejected as absurd the now usual idea of a negative number as being less than nothing, but accepted the view that it is something greater than infinity. (the argument that negative numbers are greater than infinity involves the quotient formula_1 and considering what happens as "x" approaches and then crosses the point "x" = 0 from the positive side.) despite this he is generally credited as the originator of the idea of the number line, in which numbers are represented geometrically in a line with the negative numbers represented by lengths opposite in direction to lengths of positive numbers.