The absolute value of a number is its distance from 0 on the number line. Since distance is always greater than or equal to 0, the absolute value of any number is greater than or equal to 0.
- |1/2| < - 1/4
Practice makes perfect
We want to complete the given statement. To do so, we will evaluate the absolute values on both sides.
- |1/2| - 1/4
The absolute value of a number is the distance between this number and 0 on the number line. Since distance is always greater than or equal to 0, the absolute value of any number is greater than or equal to 0. The absolute value of a non-negative number is equal to the number, while the absolute value of a negative number is equal to its opposite.
With this in mind, let's simplify the left-hand side!
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- |1/2|=- 1/2
We will plot the numbers on a number line to see which one is greater.
We can see that - | 12| is located to the left of - 14. This means it is less than - 14. With this in mind, we can complete our statement.
