The following practice questions ask you to put a group of numbers in order, but in both cases, you have to pay close attention to the question or you'll get it wrong! (Hint: one involves absolute values.)
Practice questions
- Which of these numbers has the lowest absolute value?
- Which of the following is the correct order of these numbers from greatest to least?
Answers and explanations
- The correct answer is Choice (A).
You can get the absolute values of the numbers by simply dropping all negative signs. Then you can put all the absolute values in decimal form and compare them:
To make the comparison easier, you can put extra 0s at the end of some decimals so all values have three digits after the decimal point. You can see that the lowest of all the absolute values in decimal form is 0.375, so of the numbers in the question, the one with the lowest absolute value is
- The correct answer is Choice (E).
You can convert all the numbers to decimal form:
Based on the converted forms of the numbers, the order of the forms in the question from greatest to least is
