Questions tagged [absolute-value]

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8 votes
3 answers
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Is there a standard convention for interpreting ambiguous absolute value expressions?

Consider the expression $$|x + 2|x + 3|x + 4|.$$ One way to interpret this is that there are two products being added together: $$|x+2|x \hspace{1cm} + \hspace{1cm} 3|x+4|$$ But you could also ...
Justin Skycak's user avatar
2 votes
4 answers
384 views

How can one lone picture prove the Triangle Inequality, $|x−y|≤|x|+|y|$, $|x|−|y|≤|x−y|$, and the Reverse Triangle Inequality?

I always showcase separate pictures of Triangle Inequality, and Reverse, to 16-years-old students in 1st class. I reshow pictures in 2nd class. I preachify Please remember these 4 inequalities. ...
user27289's user avatar
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4 votes
3 answers
347 views

Is there a pre-calculus introduction to the formal definition of a limit?

To give an example of what I mean, I'll answer a similarly worded question: “is there a pre-calculus introduction to the derivative?” I would say yes, since there already are the ideas of a slopes of ...
Sat's user avatar
  • 331
20 votes
11 answers
3k views

Why is absolute value difficult?

My understanding is that students find absolute value to be challenging to learn or understand. Off the top of my head, I can come up with two possible reasons for this. Absolute value is a piecewise ...
Tommi's user avatar
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