I ran into a question on a practice test which said "What is the difference between -8 and -3? I am 13, and I am quite capable of subtracting negative numbers; I just did -8–3 to get my answer, making it -8+3, then making that -5. However, when I checked my answers, I was told that it was wrong, and the answer was 5.
When finding the difference between two numbers, do you subtract the bigger number from the smaller or vice versa?
Thank a lot!
Best Answer
I would read this as "what is the distance between these two numbers". The "distance" between two numbers is always non-negative.