Absolute Value

What is Absolute Value?

Tip: This isn't the place to ask a question because the teacher can't reply.

1 of 2 videos by Don't Memorise

Key Questions

• Absolute value is how far a number is away from zero |(insert number)| is the symbol for it. example: |-6| = 6, because -6 is 6 numbers away from zero. The same applies for positives. |6| = 6, because 6 is 6 numbers away from 0.

Imagine yourself as a point. Underground= negative numbers
and above ground=positive numbers. an apple is zero

so if you have ABS (5) that means you are 5 steps away from the apple. It doesnt say if your above ground or not.

the explanation is a little hard but thats how many people learn it

• Because it is a convenient way to make sure that a quantity is nonnegative; for example, you can define the distance between two real numbers $a$ and $b$ as $| a - b |$.

I hope that this was helpful.

Absolute Value is the distance from zero a number is, so adding the absolute values will yield the distance of two points in a one dimensional plane graph. So:

Distance from l6l to l-10l =16 units of distance

-10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16)

Just to verify, we can count the places and it indeed equals 16

• The absolute value of a number is simply the distance that number lies away from 0 on the number line. Absolute value eliminates the "direction" traveled to get there. It's like saying that you walked 3 meters frontward versus 3 meters backward. You walked 3 meters in different directions from where you started!
Some examples: $| - 3 | = 3$ and $| 3 | = 3$
$| - 9 | = 9$
$| 5 | = 5$
$| 3 - 11 | = | - 8 | = 8$

With a number line in front of you, you can point to any location and tell someone how far it is from 0 by just ignoring whether that point is to the left or right of 0. Think of that as "absolute value"!

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