So far, we’ve covered the number line’s skill at telling us the location of an object and the distance between two objects. Now, let’s take a look at using the number line to sort numbers from least to greatest.
Say we want to organize these bunnies so the numbers on their shirts go in order from least to greatest.
Since 13 is larger than 3, we set up the bunnies in the following row:
We want to check our order, so we set the bunnies on the number line.
Oops! The bunny at the end of the line should actually be at the front of the line. What happened?On the number line, numbers on the left have a lower value than number on the right. As a result, positive numbers are greater than negative numbers. If both have a negative sign, then the apparent smaller number actually has the greater value.
2 is smaller than 9 when both are positive, but because -2 is to the right of -9, it is actually the larger.
This concludes Dead Bunny’s series on number lines. Once I get some issues straightened out, these posts should come together to form Dead Bunny’s first article.
