2 Quick Steps for Multiplying Negative Numbers

Here’s how to Multiply Negative Numbers

Multiplying Negative Numbers Practice Problems Quiz

Watch the video explanation of our Multiplying Negative Numbers Worksheet

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

Watch the free Multiplying Negative Numbers video on YouTube here: How to Multiple Negative Numbers Video

Video Transcript:

This video is about multiplying negative numbers. You can get the multiplying negatives worksheet used in this video for free by clicking on the link in the description below.

There are two important rules to remember when figuring out how to multiply negative numbers. The first rule is if you are multiplying two numbers together that have the same sign your answer will be a positive number. If you’re doing a positive times a positive, and they have the same sign, both have two positives that’s going to equal a positive number. If you’re doing a negative times another negative, so they have the same sign, that’s also going to be a positive number. If you are multiplying two numbers together that have opposite signs, your answer will be a negative number. For example, you do a negative times a positive that will be a negative number and if you do a positive times a negative that will also equal a negative number. This is why is a negative times a negative a positive.

Just to give you a couple quick examples, if we did negative 2 times negative 3 both of these are negative numbers. So, this is a negative times negative because they have the same sign because they’re both negative so that means our answer has to be a positive number. In this case negative 2 times negative 3 or just 2 times 3 is 6, and then we know a negative times a negative makes a positive, because they have the same sign. So the answer to this would just be positive 6. A quick example for opposite signs if we did positive 5 times a negative 4, that means they have opposite signs, so they’re different. This is a positive and this is a negative and that means that our answer has to be negative. When we multiply these together, we just multiply the numbers 5 times 4 and that gives us 20, but because they’re opposite signs, a positive number times a negative number, that gives us a negative as our final solution. This would be negative 20.

Here we are the first problem on our multiply negative numbers worksheet. You can see this problem gives us negative one times negative five. Now the first thing you may notice is that this is a negative number, and this five is also a negative number. We already know that two negatives, negative times a negative, is going to equal a positive. This is because they have the same sign and are negative times negative. So, all you have to do is multiply one times five, and one times five is obviously five, and then we know that our answer has to be positive because a negative times a negative makes a positive. Our final solution is going to be positive five, or just five.

Jumping down to number two on the worksheet for how to multiply negative numbers we have 1 times negative 8. Now this time we have opposite signs, this is a positive and this 8 is negative. We already know that a positive times a negative are opposite, which means that our answer has to be negative. If they have different signs, that means your answer will be negative. It doesn’t matter if it’s positive times negative or negative times positive. In this case when you multiply 1 times 8 that gives you 8 but then it’s a positive times a negative so your answer has to be a negative. Your answer for this will be negative 8.

Number three on our worksheet gives us negative 4 times negative 2. Again this is a negative number times another negative number, and we know that negative times a negative is going to equal positive. So you just multiply 4 times 2 and 4 times 2 is 8, and then you know the negative times the negative is going to be a positive, so we know our answer is going to be positive 8, or just 8.

The last example for this video is number 4. This gives us 3 times negative 1. We have a positive 3 right here times a negative number, which is negative 1. In this case they are not like signs, which means that our answer is going to be negative. When we multiply 3 times 1, we just do 3 times 1, and that gives us 3. Then this is a positive and this as a negative, so this negative 1 makes our final solution negative. Our answer has to be negative 3.