Video Transcript
Calculate the following: fourteen plus negative fourteen plus zero plus negative thirteen plus negative ten.
Now for questions like this, I would advise visualizing movements on the number line. So here’s our number line with zero in the middle. Now, we’re starting off at the number fourteen. Next, we’re adding something, so we expect to move in the positive direction. Remember positive numbers are up here on the number line and negative numbers are down here. But what we’re adding is negative fourteen. So we can imagine ourselves actually facing this direction, but moving backwards along the number line. So we’re gonna go fourteen spaces in this direction back to zero. Now we’re going to be adding something. So again we’re expecting to face in that direction, but what we’re adding is nothing. So we end up staying exactly where we are.
Next we’re adding something again. So we’re expecting to move in that positive direction. But what we’re adding is negative thirteen. So we’re gonna walk backwards again, but this time thirteen steps in this direction. And thirteen back from zero is negative thirteen. Next we’re adding a number again, and what we’re adding is negative ten. So we’re expecting to move in the positive direction because we’re adding. But because we’re adding a negative number, we’re gonna be walking backwards when we’re doing that. So we’re gonna go back ten more steps in that direction, so adding negative ten.
And if we move ten steps further in the negative direction from negative thirteen, we’re gonna end up at negative twenty-three. So our answer is negative twenty-three. Now you don’t actually have to draw out the number line every time. But if you do this a few times, then you’ll start to visualize this better in your head.