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.
2 < |- 5|
Practice makes perfect
We want to complete the given statement. To do so, we will evaluate the absolute values on both sides.
2 |- 5|
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 right-hand side!
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|- 5|= 5
We will plot the numbers on a number line to see which one is greater.
We can see that 2 is located to the left of |- 5|. This means it is less than |- 5|. With this in mind, we can complete our statement.
