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Course: 7th grade > Unit 3
Lesson 4: Subtracting negative numbers fluentlySubtracting negative numbers review
Review the basic of subtracting negative numbers and try some practice problems.
Subtracting negative numbers
Subtracting a number is the same as adding the opposite of the number.
Let's look at two examples:
Note: In both examples, we change subtraction to addition and changed the sign of the second number to the opposite sign.
Want to know why this works? Check out this video.
Once we have an addition problem, we can solve.
Example 1: negative negative
Lets subtract .
Step 1: Rewrite as an addition problem
Step 2: Start at the first number in the addition problem, in this case :
Step 3: Move places to the right. We move to the right because adding positive increases our number by .
Example 2: negative positive
Lets subtract .
Step 1: Rewrite as an addition problem
Step 2: Start at the first number in the addition problem, in this case :
Step 3: Move places to the left. We move to the left because adding negative decreases our number by .
Want to learn more about subtracting negative numbers? Check out this video.
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