Posted by Joel on October 04, 2002 at 11:53:21:
In Reply to: Absolute numbers? posted by Jmiah on October 04, 2002 at 11:05:07:
: Sorry, but I forgot everything aboute absolute numbers over the summer. Please explain.
Given any real number n:
if n > 0, |n| = n
if n < 0, |n| = -n
As you already realized, a double negative is a positive, so in plain English this means that |n| is always positive.
For example, if n = 5, |n| = |5| = 5
if n = -5, |n| = |-5| = -(-5) = 5
OK?