I thought absolute values are supposed to be a number's distance from 0, which is always positive. So I had this equation:
| 7 – y | = 12
According to practice tests they say this,
This equation means we need to solve two equations: 7–y=12, and 7–y=-12 which means y=-5,19.
Even if the answer inside the vertical bars was negative, wouldn't the vertical bars make it positive, resulting in just 1 positive answer?
Thanks for any help you can give!
Edit
I found out what happened! I didn't notice when they said the equations could have both 12, and -12 they didn't include absolute value bars, so they were just referring to how the variable can be both positive, or negative.