Math question, help please?

Question

so my teacher, my mom, my dad, my book, my notes, everyone of those has tried to explain absolute value to me but i just dont seem to get it. can anyone help me understand what to do? please...im in desperate need..i dont want to fail my test just because of Absolute value :(

Answer 1

It is very simple. All absolute value means is that you the sign of the number is always positive.

Read through this. http://www.purplemath.com/modules/absolu...

Don't be lazy. If you read through it well, you'll understand it.

Answer 2

Think of the absolute value of a number as its distance from 0.  |3| is 3 away from 0.  |-3| is also three away from 0.  So, |3| = |-3| = 3.

The term "modulus" that showed up in the cut and paste answer from Wiki is also related to distance, but in a somewhat more complex way.  I'd ignore that if I were you, at least for right now.

Answer 3

absolute value is the distance between a number and 0.

OR to find the absolute value just look at the number and disregard the sign

Examples:

When you look at I-4I the answer is 4. just forget the sign and the number is your answer.

Answer 4

Any number or variable is composed of two parts. There is the value part and the sign part. When a sign is not present, it is assumed to be positive (+).

Examples include:

3, √81, -543, x, -y

The absolute value of any of those numbers or variables is just the value without the sign. So the absolute value for -7 is just 7, not +7.

Answer 5

In mathematics, the absolute value (or modulus) of a real number is its numerical value without regard to its sign. So, for example, 3 is the absolute value of both 3 and −3.

[[WikiPedia]]

Answer 6

all absolute value means is how many spots away from zero a number is. -3 and 3 are both 3 spots away from 0. So the absolute value of both is 3. It doesn't matter if they are positive or negative. Just the number of spaces to 0. -135345 and 135345 are the same distance from 0 so they have the same absolute value. Hope that helps

Answer 7

Dear Betty,

You probably know that numbers ordinarily have a positive or negative value.  If you don't, here's a quick lesson.

Think of a line with zero in the middle.  The numbers on the left are negative numbers.  The numbers on the right are positive.  That's called the "number line" and it works.

Now about absolute value.  Those numbers are just numbers.  They can't be negative.   So going back to our number line, draw a line going up from zero.  Absolute numbers would be added along that line.  Since they are absolute, the numbers are never negative (eg. neither right nor left; just up.)

Hope this helps,

Tiger Toy