The Easy to Follow Formula for Dividing Negative Numbers

Here’s how to Divide Negative Numbers

Division of Negative Numbers Practice Problems Quiz

Watch our video explanation of our Dividing Negative Numbers Worksheet

Watch our free video on how to Divide Negative Numbers. This video shows how to solve problems that are on our free Dividing Negative Numbers worksheet that you can get by submitting your email above.

Watch the free Dividing Negative Numbers video on YouTube here: How to Divide Negative Numbers Video

Video Transcript:

This video is about dividing by negative numbers​. You can get the worksheet using this video for free by clicking on the link in the description below.

Before we get started, I want to talk about two important rules that are important to remember in determining how to divide negative numbers. The first rule is that if the two numbers you are dividing have the same sign then your answer will be a positive number. This means if you have a positive number divided by another positive number your answer will be positive. Or if you are dividing two negative numbers, so they have the same sign, your answer will also be positive, they have the same sign. Positive divided by positive, it’s positive or negative divided by negative, it’s also positive. When you’re dividing negative and positive numbers your answer will be negative. It doesn’t matter if you divide a positive divided by a negative, that will give you a negative as your answer. Or if you did a negative number divided by a positive number. That is still going to give you a negative as an answer.

Let’s do two real quick examples of dividing positive and negative numbers before we go to our practice worksheet. This first example gives us negative 10 divided by negative 2. Now these both have the same sign. This is a negative and this is also a negative. We know that our answer automatically has to be a positive number because this is a negative divided by a negative because they both have the same sign. In this case negative all you have to do is actually divide the two numbers, 10 divided by 2 is 5 and then we know that because a negative divided by a negative is a positive. We know that it’s going to have to be positive 5 or just 5. Second example we’re going to do real fast is 9 divided by negative 3. This time this 9 is positive and this 3 is negative and because they have opposite signs, positive divided by a negative, we automatically now that our answer has to be negative. To get the number answer you just do nine divided by three, and that’s going to be three, and then it has to be negative because a positive divided by a negative makes a negative. Our answer is going to be negative three.

Jumping to number one in our dividing negative numbers worksheet we have negative 10 divided by negative five. This problem gives us a negative number, this is a negative divided by another negative number. A negative divided by a negative, they have the same sign which means that our answer has to automatically be a positive number. What we’re going to do is when we divide we divide 10 divided by five, we divide the actual numbers 10 and five and that gives us two. Then we automatically know that a negative divided by negative makes a positive. This has to be positive two or just two. Jumping down to number two it gives us sixteen divided by negative eight. Now this time we have a positive number, 16 is positive divided by a negative number, eight is negative. We already know that they have different signs and when they have different signs your answer will be a negative. Positive divided by negative makes a negative. In this case 16 divided by eight is going to be two, and then we know positive divided by a negative has to be a negative number. Our answer is going to be negative two.

Here’s our third problem showing you how to divide negative numbers, and this time we have negative forty divided by negative two. In this case a negative divided by a negative, they have the same sign. We know our answer is going to have to be positive. What we do is we take our two numbers, in this case forty and two and we divide them. 40 divided by two is twenty, and then we know that a negative divided by a negative has to make a positive. We know this is going to be positive twenty, or just 20. The last example that we’re going to go we’re on our dividing negative numbers worksheet is number 4. In this case we have 3 divided by negative 1. We know that 3 is a positive number and it’s being divided by a negative number. They have opposite signs and a rule for figuring out how to divide negative numbers is that a positive divided by a negative is going to equal a negative number, because they have opposite signs. We just take our numbers 3 & 1 and we divide them. 3 divided by 1 is 3, and then we know that it has to be negative because a positive divided by a negative makes a negative number. Our final answer for this one is going to be negative 3.