Skills Handbook - Absolute Value - Exercises - Page 892: 12

$-40$

Absolute value is used to represent the distance of a number from $0$ on a number line. Since distances are always positive, the result of an absolute value will always be positive. Therefore, to take the absolute value of a negative number, we simply take the negative of that number to make it positive, and to take the absolute value of a positive number, we do nothing to the number. We start with the given expression: $-8|-9+4|$ We simplify inside the absolute value symbols by adding: $-8|-5|$ We take the negative of the negative inside of the absolute values to make it positive: $-8(-(-5))=-8(5)$ We multiply: $-40$