Video Transcript
Consider the following figure. What sum does this diagram
represent? What is the distance between the
first addend six and the sum?
When we look at this diagram, we
need to consider two things. We need to consider distance and
direction. For our first value, it’s between
zero and six, and that’s a distance of six units. We can also tell from our arrow
that it’s moving to the right, so it is a positive six. That would be our first addend. Our second addend is from six to
nine, a distance of three units. And again, we’re moving those three
units to the right, which is adding three units. Our second addend is positive
three, and we are adding these two values together. This figure is the sum six plus
three equals nine.
To answer the second question “What
is the distance between the first addend six and the sum?,” if our first addend six
ends here and the sum of nine is there, we visually see that the distance between
those two spaces is three. We could just say that the answer
is three. However, let’s write it as the
magnitude or the absolute value of three, just to emphasize that distance is always
a positive measure. The distance between six and nine
is the absolute value of three.
