We've learned a lot about subtraction so far. But you may be wondering: why is this important in the real world? After all, it's not as if someone will walk by you and hand you a piece of paper with a subtraction problem on it. Even so, you may be surprised to learn how often you use subtraction in your everyday life.
A lot of these everyday subtraction problems are presented in word problems. In word problems, you don't just have a set of numbers in front of you. You need to look for clues in the problem to help you figure out what numbers to work with.
In word problems, if a person gets more, buys more, or finds more, we use addition. If a person gets less, sells some, or loses some, we use subtraction.
Here's an example of a word problem. If Nimah has $5, and she spends $3 on a sandwich, how much money does she have left? Here, you should look for clues in the problem to figure out how to find the difference (answer). The problem says that Nimah starts with $5. It also says that she spends $3. Since Nimah is losing some of her money, this means you should subtract: 5 minus 3 equals 2 (5 - 3 = 2). So the difference is that Nimah has $2 left.
