Question

A friend told Sandy that absolute value makes everything positive so Sandy wrote the equation |x-6|=5 as x+6=5. Do you agree with the statement, or with what Sandy did to the equation? Explain your answer.

Answer 1

Sandy is incorrect. Absolute value marks serve the same purpose as parenthesis. So to solve the equation correctly, you would find the answer to x-6. Absolute value is the distance from zero, so the answer is 5. For example, if the answer was -5 then the answer would still be 5 because it is 5 units away from zero.