What is the difference between 5 and 3

How to videos Why join? What is 'the difference between'? We explain what teachers mean when they talk about finding 'the difference between' and give examples of how children are taught to work out the answers to subtraction problems.

Login or Register to add to your saved resources. Teachers will often ask children to find the difference between two numbers. It can take children a while to work out what this means if you ask a child what the difference is between 7 and 8, they might say the 7 is made of straight lines and the eight is made of curvy lines It is important that children learn that when we say: 'What is the difference between 1 and 6? Children can be encouraged to use their fingers or a number line to work out the answer.

If they used their fingers, they would need to have the 1 in their head, then count on their fingers to get to 6, holding up 5 fingers, which is their answer. If they used a number line, they could put their finger on the 1 and then 'jump' up to get to the 6, counting as they go along:.

Finding the difference: different methods used in primary school As children progress further up primary school, they may be asked to find the difference between bigger numbers, for example: 'What is the difference between 56 and 72?

Here are a few: Subtraction on a number line complementary addition or the jump strategy Subtraction column method Subtraction: partitioning method It is very important that children become confident in finding the difference between two numbers up to four digits by the end of Year 4. Imagine the number line as a single axis of a graph plane; a dimension, rather. Number lines are commonly represented in whole numbers, each number representing a scaling increment of that line.

Counting the total, positive amount increments between two numbers on the same number line will give you a hands-on approach at discovering absolute value. Absolute value looks like this:. Like usual, a number line will have negative numbers numbers less than 0 to the left of 0, and positive numbers numbers greater than 0 to the right of 0. When subtracting a positive number from any number in this case, you will move your placeholder left.

Conversely, subtracting a negative number from any number becomes addition. I hope this paints a decent picture. I can edit this later with some Photoshopped number lines and other visuals if need be. As stated before, finding the difference between two numbers, is just to subtract them. So if you want to find the difference, you take the bigger one minus the smaller one.

But what if you dont know which one is bigger? The difference between the plus and minus sign is that the plus sign in the difference implies a growth and the minus sign implies a decrease. That assumes that you are calculating a difference between two numbers that show the time variation of a magnitude. If just the difference between two numbers want to be observed, then you should get the positive value and define the difference between two numbers as the absolute value of their difference, obtaining always the positive value.

The difference between two numbers on a number line is the distance between them and it varies whether you are going from left to right or right to left. The commonly used way is to go from right to left, which gives us a positive number. For calculating difference between -5 and 2, plot both of them on the number line. If you go from right to left, the answer is 7 and it is -7 if we go left to right. And describing the difference with a negative number tells me that the sales decreased rather than increased, which I think is rather important.

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. How should we calculate difference between two numbers? Ask Question. Asked 5 years, 2 months ago. Active 2 years, 2 months ago.