Question

What is the distance between two points $A$ and $B$ representing respective numbers $x$ and $y$ on a number line.

Answer 1

If we have two points $A$ and $B$ on the number line such that point $A$ is $x$ and point $B$ is $y$ then the distance between the two is given by

$d=x-y$ when $x-y$ is positive.
$=y-x$ when $x-y$ is negative.