Video Transcript
Evaluate the absolute value of negative eight divided by four times the absolute value of three.
When evaluating expressions, we always follow the order of operation, which we sometimes summarize with the phrase PEMDAS. Parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, and addition and subtraction. And we would solve absolute value in the first step, in the parentheses step, which means, in our expression, we’ll find the absolute value of negative eight.
The absolute value of negative eight is its distance from zero, which is positive eight. So we’ll bring that down. The absolute value of three is the distance of three from zero, which is three. And so we’ll bring that down as well. We now have the expression eight divided by four times three. We’ve completed the parentheses step.
There are no exponents. And we have to be really careful here with order of operations because we do multiplication and division in the same step from left to right. We move along our problem from left to right. And since we only have multiplication and division left, we’ll complete the first thing we get to. Here it’s eight divided by four. We know that’s two.
And so we bring down the rest of the problem. And then we have two times three, which equals six. The expression the absolute value of negative eight divided by four times the absolute value of three equals six.
