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Absolute value review

Review absolute value, and try some practice problems.

What is absolute value?

The absolute value of a number is its distance from 0.
Example: positive number
The absolute value of 4 is 4:
A number line from negative 5 to 5 with evenly spaced tick marks in increments of 1. Above the number line is a bracket labeled 4 that starts at 0 and ends at 4.
Example: negative number
The absolute value of 4 is also 4:
A number line from negative 5 to 5 with evenly spaced tick marks in increments of 1. Above the number line is a bracket labeled 4 that starts at negative 4 and ends at 0.
4 and 4 are the same distance from 0, so they have the same absolute value of 4.
Want to learn more about absolute value? Check out this video.

The absolute value symbol

The symbol for absolute value is a bar | on each side of the number.
Example:
"The absolute value of 3.2" can be written |3.2|.

Practice

Problem 1
What is |5|?
  • Your answer should be
  • an integer, like 6
  • a simplified proper fraction, like 3/5
  • a simplified improper fraction, like 7/4
  • a mixed number, like 1 3/4
  • an exact decimal, like 0.75
  • a multiple of pi, like 12 pi or 2/3 pi

Want to try more problems like this? Check out these exercises: Finding absolute value
Comparing absolute values

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