Question

The bears football team lost 7 yards and then gained 12 yards. what is the result of the two plays

Answer 1

Start at 0 and go back 7 yards for their loss. You are not at -7 on the number line.
Move 12 to the right because of the gain. It takes 7 or those 12 just to get back to zero and you can still move 5 more to the right. You will wind up with a gain of 5 yards. (+5)

Answer 2

The result of the two plays is that the bears gained 5 yards.

Explanation:

We can denote the lost values as negative and won value as positive.

Given is - the bears football team lost 7 yards and then gained 12 yards.

If we take the initial start point to be zero, we can calculate the resultant.

`0-7+12=+5`

Or we can calculate simply :

`-7+12=+5`

Hence, the result of the two plays is that the bears gained 5 yards.