math absolute value

Hello. I understand that you found your lessons on absolute value confusing.

I could certainly point you to more lessons, or type lessons myself, but would you understand them?

Probably not, so that would waste our time.

How about you explain your confusion for us, instead (per our posting guidelines). What specifically did you see or hear about absolute value that you do not understand?

If you would like to read additional lessons, you may start by clicking the link in your original post OR google for lessons and examples.

Cheers :cool:
 
courtney333 said:
How do you do absolute value? I don't understand any of it or how to do it.
Click to expand...
This is one of the most poorly taught topics. Thus I am going ahead and give you some basic information.
Absolute value is what is known as a metric, distance. As such the absolute value of any number must be greater than or equal to zero, distances are never negative.
\(\displaystyle |a|\) is the distance the number \(\displaystyle a\) is from \(\displaystyle 0\)
Thinking in terms of distance you see \(\displaystyle |4|=4\) but \(\displaystyle |-3|=3\).

Now, kick it up one level.
\(\displaystyle |a-b|\) stands for the distance from \(\displaystyle a\) to \(\displaystyle b\).

So to write \(\displaystyle |x-3|<2\) is to say x is less than two units from \(\displaystyle 3\) or \(\displaystyle 1<x<5\).

So to write \(\displaystyle |x+1|>5\) is to say x is more than five units from \(\displaystyle -1\) or \(\displaystyle x<-6\text{ or }x>4\).

Now that is a start.
 
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