Question

if absolute values are always positive then why √(-1)^2= (-1)^1/2*2= (-1) ?

Answer 1

Step-by-step explanation:

My Princeton Review teacher said something in class that made me scratch my head. We were going over a DS problem, and the prompt was something along the lines of "What is the value of x?"

One of the statements read: \sqrt{}

I said insufficient, because x could equal 4 or -4. My instructor said this incorrect, and that in instances like this, the GMAT will always assume the square root to be the positive root. Is this true on the actual GMAT? It doesn't seem to make sense to me. The last thing I want to do is get an easy answer wrong because of something like this.