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Absolute Value a la Shmoop A healthy sense of optimism can have a strong

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effect on one’s psyche. No, no – psyche.

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For example, you might hear an optimistic person say, “I just got a terrible haircut…

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but my new faux-hawk will make me stand out from the crowd!”

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Or, “an earthquake just swallowed my home… but I get to be on the news!”

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Or, “an asteroid the size of the sun is hurtling toward the Earth and we have only

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a few minutes left to live… but at least we’re all going together!”

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See how much nicer things seem when we put a positive spin on it?

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Then you’re just going to love Absolute Value.

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All this guy does is take negatives and turn them into positives. Of course, he also takes

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positives and keeps them positive. We’re talking a whole lot of positivity.

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Absolute Value determines how many spots away a number is from zero on the Number Line.

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You could never be a negative number of spots away from zero, which is why Absolute Value

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is always so dang positive. You can tell you’re dealing with an Absolute

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Value because you’ll see a number surrounded by bars on either side. It looks almost like

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they’re in prison or, as Absolute Value would say, “on vacation.”

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Take any number, put it through the Absolute Value machine, and you’ll get its true colors.

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Say you want to find the Absolute Value of the number seven.

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First, we put it in “prison” so we know we’re looking for the Absolute Value, and

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not just looking at a run-of-the-mill seven. Then we can count the spaces between zero

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and seven… which, surprise surprise, is seven.

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It will be the same story for every single positive number…

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which makes our job easier. However, it’s a bit different when we have a negative number.

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Suppose we want to find the Absolute Value of negative three. First we jail that sucker…

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and then we locate it on the Number Line. We count three spaces in-between negative

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three and zero, and so our Absolute Value is three.

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But what if we have a number with more than one negative sign? Suppose it’s been hoarding

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them since 1973 and has accumulated three hundred of them?

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Doesn’t matter. No matter how many times you reflect the number three across zero…

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It will always be exactly three spaces away from zero. Therefore, its Absolute Value will

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always be three. Being so positive all the time can definitely

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lift your mood, and keep you from being down in the dumps.

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Absolute Value is about as upbeat as they come. Which can actually be really annoying

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sometimes. If you tell anyone else we’ll deny it, but

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boy, we hate that guy.

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