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Review: Number Line Segment
Explanation
The answer choices to this question indicate that we will
deal with absolute value. Absolute value measures the distance of a quantity
from zero. Here we have a slightly asymmetric situation. The line segment is 5
ticks long. If this line segment were centered on zero, it would be 
.
From that, we can see the answer must be (D) or (E). The term inside indicates
the slight shift to the left. Which does it correctly? The center point of this
line is 
;
that's what we are measuring distance from in this expression, so if we put
that in, we should get zero.
The correct answer is (E).
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