The direction is specified by the negative number. That is the direction. Your velocity could be negative 5 meters per second, but your speed would just be 5 meters per second. Your speed is 5 meters per second whether you're going to the left or to the right. Your velocity, you actually care whether you're going to the left or the right. Let's just keep that in mind while we try to solve this problem. The best way to figure out whether our rate of change is increasing or decreasing is to look at the acceleration because acceleration is really just the rate of change of velocity.