How to find absolute difference between two numbers MYSQL

Question

What's the best way to find the absolute difference between two numbers in MYSQL so that I may order results? The below works, only if numberA is larger than numberB, but as you can see this is not always the case. Is there a good way to do this with one statement?

SELECT (numberA - numberB) AS spread 
FROM table 
ORDER BY spread DESC

|-------------------|
| numberA | numberB |
| 5.4     | 2.2     |
| 7.7     | 4.3     |
| 1       | 6.5     |
| 2.3     | 10.8    |
| 4.5     | 4.5     |

Answer 1

As simple as that:

SELECT ABS(numberA - numberB) AS spread 
FROM table 
ORDER BY spread DESC

Or, if you want to select the pair (numberA, numberB) in descending order of their difference:

SELECT numberA, numberB
FROM table 
ORDER BY ABS(numberA - numberB) DESC