Positive and Negative Number Rules – Learn The EASY WAY

okay let's talk about positive and negative number rules and what i'm going to try to do is make this super easy for you this is something you absolutely need to know if you're at the middle school high school or even college level in terms of mathematics and this is an example of the things that we're going to be talking about something like negative 8 plus 5 is equal to negative 3 so this is an addition problem but the rules that we're going to talk about here cover multiplication division addition and subtraction we're going to learn how to deal with positive and negative number negative numbers with these operations okay so this has been confusing you for while most of you probably think this is kind of easy but you make lot of errors and that is fairly typical of algebra students or any kind of math students but what i'm going to do is give you nice easy way to think about this so you can get these problems right every single time so we're going to do all of that or get into all these rules here in just one second but first let me quickly introduce myself my name is john i'm the founder of tablet class math i'm also middle and high school math teacher i'm going to leave link to my math health program in the description of this video but have been teaching math for decades and i've come to this major belief that one that all students can be successful in mathematics but it requires two things okay one it requires student to do the work so if you're not gonna do the homework or take notes or you know pay attention then you're never going to be successful in anything so you got to be willing to do the work but the second thing students need to be successful in math is super clear and understandable math instruction and that's where can help you out so if you're if you're at the middle school high school or even college level in terms of mathematics can definitely help you out with your respective math courses also if you happen to be preparing for any sort of test that has math section on it i'm talking about things like the like teacher certification exam have large library of test prep courses you can check out if you homeschool definitely got to check out my middle and high school homeschool math courses topped ranked in the homeschool community and if you need some math notes i'm going to leave links to my math notes in the description of this video as well okay so let's get into positive and negative number rules and let's make this easy because you know there's already enough pressure on you to learn lot of things in mathematics and we need to make this easy because you have to get these problems right every single time i'd have to say for those students that struggle in mathematics i'm not joking i'm saying like 50 of students who struggle in math okay at least the middle school high school math or in college math will make errors with positive and negative numbers because they never really learned these rules confidently okay you have to be 100 percent absolutely positive that you know what you're doing with these rules but here again we're talking about addition subtraction multiplication and division now oftentimes these rules are kind of broken up into force set of four rules okay you learn how to do this and then this and this and this what i'm going to do is i'm going to take these four operations and i'm going to give you two rules to think about because that's all we really need to know and again want to make this easy for you okay so here's the deal our first rule is going to be addition so if you know how to add positive and negative numbers then you're going to need to then you'll know how to subtract positive and negative numbers i'll explain this in second okay so this is like one rule again if we can teach you how to add positive and negative numbers you'll already know how to subtract positive negative numbers there's little bit of twist there but basically that's like one rule and then over here this is super easy if you know how to multiply positive and the and negative numbers well then you automatically know how to divide positive and negative numbers because this is the same rule okay this right here is 100 the same rule so already you can see we have four operations when it comes to multiplication and division these are actually the same rules and this is super easy okay and i'm going to show you this right now and then we'll get into addition and subtraction here in just one second so let's talk about multiplication and division super easy rule and here is the rule okay if the signs are the same the answer is positive if the signs are different the answer is negative that is it but let me tell you what this let me kind of explain further what this rule means so let's talk about this problem right here we have 4 times negative 5. now this 4 just have it written like this but what is the sign of this number well it is positive 4. you don't write it like this you don't write like positive 4 right there but 4 all by itself is positive so let me ask you are the signs the same or different right here well this one's positive and this one's negative so we're talking about different sides so the answer is going to be negative so the way this works is you just multiply the numbers as you do regular multiplication but we have to get the sign right so here positive and negative different signs so my answer is negative 4 times 5 is 20 this will be negative 20 because the signs are different okay so let's take look at this example right here here we have negative four times negative five are the signs the different or the same well they are the same they're both negative so my final answer is positive okay super easy let's go to division here have negative 6 divided by positive 3. again we don't if you just see 3 but like this that is saying that that is positive number so are the signs the same or different they are different so my final answer is going to be negative so 6 divided by 3 is 2 but the sign is negative because the signs are different here have negative 6 divided by negative 3 same signs okay so my final answer will be positive so that is it okay again hopefully you find this pretty easy and we're already 50 done with the rules for positive and negative numbers so imagine that this is not that difficult okay so let's move on to where students tend to have little bit more difficulty but i'm going to make it easy for you so this is addition and subtraction okay so i'm going to first of all set this up by saying this the first thing we want to be doing when you see addition or subtraction problems with positive negative numbers is to think about money so lot of you like wow like that so you probably got little happy face you're like money that's awesome yep want you to be thinking about money and i'm going to show you exactly here why that is and then also when it comes to subtraction problems we're going to change all subtraction problems to addition problems so if we know how to add then we can do all addition problems obviously and then we're going to take subtraction problems and turn them into addition problems so we'll be able to do all of this okay all right so let's talk about this money thing right here and this is the kind of the concept if you have positive number okay that's like you having money okay let's say you have some money in your pocket if you have negative number that's like you owe that amount okay you don't have that money you have to pay someone that amount of money so again positive positive number like positive 12 or 12 is like you having 12 bucks in your pocket negative three is like you don't have that money you owe that money to someone okay you here you would owe three dollars for example so if this you know if you can remember this then what what you have to do is just kind of figure out the financial situation of these problems okay let me tell you exactly what i'm talking about let's take this problem right here so let's kind of see if we can kind of give meaning to this but we'll use our little money model to figure this out so negative eight so what does that mean negative eight well it means you owe somebody eight dollars so you're like man owe my best friend eight bucks but no worries have ten dollars right so negative eight means you owe eight dollars but you're you have ten dollars so negative eight plus ten is what well you owe eight dollars but you have ten dollars so you pay that eight dollars back and you have still two dollars positive two so negative eight plus ten is equal to positive two okay you have ten bucks you owe eight dollars so you get to keep two dollars right so you still have two dollars so if you understand this then you know you're going to be well on your way of mastering how to add positive and negative numbers let's take look at another example so what does this mean well have positive eight that means have eight dollars yay we have money we have eight bucks that's pretty good amount to have in our pocket you know maybe it's five and three ones who knows right but you have eight dollars but your best friend comes up to you like hey you remember last week gave you ten dollars want my ten dollars back so you have ten dollars but you owe now ten dollars you're like boy so what what's that situat what does your financial situation look like well you have to give that eight dollars back to your back to your your friend right so here you take my eight dollars now you have no money but still owe you two dollars all right so it's negative two means you still owe two dollars you have two dollars in debt so eight plus negative ten is equal to negative two okay so if this kind of helps you there's other formal ways you can kind of learned the rules of positive and negative numbers and you should learn them so here you could subtract the two and then the absolute value of these two numbers and then the number with the larger sign is going to be the sign of the answer and that's fine too but if you can kind of remember this in terms of money this makes this so much easier you're like boy have ten dollars in debt it's like you owe ten bucks and you go work you know you rake up the leaves in your in your neighbor's yard and they give you eight bucks and you're like okay have eight dollars so now i'm only two dollars in debt okay however you want to think about it but just give meaning to these numbers with positive and negative number of values because this is the way it works in real life when you're dealing with actual finances okay so like credit card statement or balance sheet bank statement you're going to see positive and negative numbers and they mean exactly what i'm saying right here all right let's take look at this example so negative three plus negative seven so how can interpret that well owe somebody three dollars and now owe another person seven dollars right or maybe owe this person three bucks and now they say no you owe me another seven dollars more so have total of ten dollars in debt so negative three plus negative seven is equal to negative ten all right so here is nice easy prom to end this with so three plus seven is what have three bucks and then make another seven dollars so have total of ten dollars so positive three plus positive 7 is equal to positive 10. okay so if you understand that let's go ahead and talk about subtraction real quick and then we'll wrap up this video so as indicated we're going to take all subtraction problems and turn them into addition problems and now that no now that we know how to add we should be able to do all these problems and we're going to use this little term or phrase plus negative okay this is how we take subtraction problems and we write them as addition problems so i'm going to show you that right now so let's take this problem for example 3 minus 5. now lot of you would be quick to just say that's 2 okay then you would be incorrect in case you're just thinking basic subtraction back from the you know third and fourth grade so again we want to take subtraction problems and write them as addition problems and the way we're going to do this is something called plus negative so the way it works is here's our subtraction our difference operator our subtraction operators we're going to make into an addition and we're going to put the negative sign to the right of that plus sign so here let me just do this again so here's our subtraction sign we're going to turn it into addition and put the negative to the right of that subtraction sign so let's see that in action here so 3 minus 5 we're going to turn this into an addition problem boop and then put the negative to the right on that number so now it's very kind of clear what's going on so this is so 3 minus 5 is the same thing as 3 plus negative 5. all right so 3 minus 5 again is the same thing as 3 plus negative five and now we can kind of go back to our little financial models you're like boy have three bucks but owe someone five dollars so still owe two bucks so three plus negative five is equal to negative two okay so again we went from subtraction to addition that is the key all right so let's go ahead and take look at few examples here and then we'll go ahead and call this wrap so negative 7 minus 10 for example right so we're subtracting positive and negative numbers so we're going to take this minus sign we're going to turn it into addition sign by plus negative so negative 7 plus negative 10 is what well have seven dollars in debt and now owe another 10 so negative 7 plus negative 10 is negative 17. how about this situation 5 minus minus 4. so here this can be quite confusing for somebody out there but just so you know negative of negative okay this is like negative times negative so the signs are the same this is positive so you might be saying plus negative well this negative sign also is like saying the opposite of this number okay this value so this is like the opposite of negative 4 just so you know negative of negative is always positive so 5 minus 4 let me kind of erase this here 5 minus 4 or if you want to think of it think of it this way 5 plus negative of negative if this all becomes positive okay so 5 minus minus 4 let's go back and see that so you can really get crystal clear minus and minus this is going to be positive same thing as 5 plus 4 which of course will be positive 9. okay so this is positive and negative numbers hopefully you know this was an easier way to you know remember things you know i've been doing this for long long time and those students who you know kind of follow these major principles again there's two rules right if you know how to add then you're going to know how to subtract and then multiplication and division are the same rules and when you're thinking about addition of positive negative numbers think about money okay if you do that you're going to get these problems right 99 of the time everybody makes math errors make math there's because you know math is game of focus right so you want to reduce the amount of errors you make by being highly you know concentrating you know in highly focused state but beyond that you want to you know have good solid understanding for these rules okay and if you can get these positive negative number rules down then your math life is going to be lot easier and if this little video helps you out well go ahead and consider helping me out by smashing that like button and maybe even subscribing to my youtube channel i've been on youtube for 10 plus years have over thousand plus math videos on my channel from basic math to advanced math like calculus and everything in between so if you like my teaching style please take advantage of my math content but my bet my best math help will always be within my math help program okay so with that being said definitely wish you all the best in your mathematics adventures thank you for your time and have great day