Intermediate Test Prep Math 8 (Grades7-8) Trial and Error

An integer (pronounced IN-tuh-jer) is a whole number that can be positive, negative, or zero.

Examples of integers are

Negative whole numbers -4

Positive whole numbers 1

Zero 0

An integer cannot be:

A fraction 4/1, 2/3

A decimal 1.25, .333...

Even though 4/1 has the same numerical value as 4, it is not an integer because it is written as a fraction.

Another way to represent integers is to show them on a number line. Each number on the line below is an integer. You can go all the way to infinity on both the positive and negative side. (But we don't have room for that here.)

Negative Numbers					Positive Numbers

	-3	-2	-1	0		1	2	3

The last thing you need to know about integers is another way to explain them. It's easy to remember that integers include positive whole numbers. The easiest way to remember that it includes the negative numbers is to remember that for every positive number, you have a opposite negative number. This is called the additive inverse of the positive number. The positive number and its additive inverse always add to zero.

Positive number	Additive inverse	Adds to:
1	-1	1 + -1 = 0
100	-100	100 + -100 = 0
4	-4	4 + -4 = 0