Week 3 – The Absolute Value of a Real Number

The absolute value of a real number is defined as the principal square root of the square of a number. The absolute value of a number is the distance of the number from 0 on a number line. The absolute value is always positive.

On the number line below, the numbers -4 and 4 is located 4 units away from 0. So each number has an absolute value of 4.