John D. answered • 05/22/14
Tutor
New to Wyzant
Middle School to Early College Science, Math, and Writing - John
The absolute value is used in the real world to define the DIFFERENCE or change from one point to another. A good example I found was that if the everybody is going 55 mph and you are going 70 or 40 mph you will most likely get a ticket. It matters because the difference between you and everybody else is 15 mph. Not -15 or +15 but 15.
They use it in physics and calculus to define certain situations: you want to know how far something traveled when it went 5 ft. one way and 5 ft. back. Well it didn't actually go anywhere because it is back where it started.... Kind of like adding -5 to +5. You get zero. But with an absolute value you can say, it traveled 10 ft. altogether even though it didn't go anywhere.
I hope that was interesting for you as it was for me. I didn't realize how much we use absolute values everyday.
(I found the answer here.)
http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/57177.html
He A.
05/22/14