Name: Thrive! NCHE Homeschool Conference
Start: 2025-05-22T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-05-24T23:59:59-05:00
Location: Winston-Salem, NC

This topic has 8 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 12 years, 6 months ago by Monica.

Viewing 9 posts - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

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October 29, 2012 at 4:12 pm
Sue
Participant
I must be approaching “that time” or else I’m truly depressed. I just sat down to read my daughter’s next algebra lesson in the MUS Algebra instruction manual, and there I see a paragraph or two on Absolute Value Bars. This is something I do not remember from Algebra class in high school, and I always got A’s in math, straight through Trigonometry.
I read the material and thought I understood what they meant, and I found a website that simply stated that the bars just tell you, basically, how far the number is from zero–whether positive or negative. So your end result of whatever is inside the bars is expressed as a positive number.
My problem is two-fold. First, how does one use these Absolute Value Bars in a practical sense? Second, I tried a couple of practice problems on this website, and I feel clueless as to how to choose the correct answers.
Does anyone know of a website that would explain this better to me? I don’t want to hand it off to my daughter (who is only so-so in math) and not be able to help her if she doesn’t get it. Is this covered in a simple, non-lengthy fashion on something like Khan(sp?) Academy?
Please help! I am getting a headache, and I am ready to go back to bed and pull the covers over my head!!
October 29, 2012 at 4:42 pm
Bookworm
Participant
Absolute value bars are very, very simple. They just make everything in them POSITIVE. If your number in the absolute value bars is positive, then it stays positive. If negative, then it changes to positive. That’s it. There’s nothing else to it. They are “negativity erasers.” THEN of course, the texts will start putting negative signs OUTSIDE the bars. But that is just a simple matter of “following the negative signs.) If you let us know exactly which problems you are having trouble with, I could show you. You don’t really need another website. Just explain to your daughter that those two bars are magic negativity erasers and that whatever is inside them is REALLY positive. Always, always, always. Then you apply what is OUTSIDE them, from closest to farthest. It’s that simple. Tell her there is an Absolute Value fairy with a magic positivity wand if you like. 🙂 But that’s just all there is to it.
October 29, 2012 at 5:30 pm
Janell
Participant
Echoing Bookworm:
Absolute Value means the value of a number in relation to its distance to zero on the numberline regardless if it is positive or negative.
/-3/ & /3/ both have the absolute value of 3 because each are 3 steps away from zero. Absolute values are always positive unless you see a negative sign before the absolute value symbol…-/3/ = -3.
October 29, 2012 at 5:57 pm
Bookworm
Participant
One thing I did with one of my kids when we were doing the endless streams of -(-)(-)-/-3/ was this: I taped a + on the “on” position of a light switch, and a – on the “off” position. Then we simply turned the switch on and off. We began like in the above problem—with a -3–in the “off” position. But the absolute value signs turn it “on”. Then the next negative sign turns it OFF. Then the next one turns it back ON again. Then the next one turns it back off. Etc, for as long as you have the string in your problem. (We also used an electronic circuit board labeled with negative and positive signs to learn the four operations using negative numbers.)
October 29, 2012 at 6:01 pm
Sue
Participant
Bookworm, I’m going to PM you about this, if you don’t mind….
October 29, 2012 at 8:38 pm
LDIMom
Participant
Oh My Word. This confirms my decision to find either a tutorial or tutor for DS starting next year, when he’ll be in 9th grade.
October 30, 2012 at 2:41 am
suzukimom
Participant
Also, keep in mind that Algebra questions with Absolute Values sometimes have more than one right answer….

for a simple example…..
|x| = 3
x is 3 OR -3

October 30, 2012 at 4:02 am
Sue
Participant
Okay, now that I get….it’s not as complicated as I previously thought, and so far the problems she’s working on don’t go beyond the simple explanation that Steve Demme provided on the dvd & in the book.
Pondering algebra while listening to the windows rattle (from Hurricane Sandy),
Sue
October 30, 2012 at 11:46 am
Monica
Participant
Some tutoring for the tutor. 🙂
http://www.khanacademy.org/math/algebra/absolute-value