I have heard that a dedicated IP address is an added advantage for SEO purposes, is it true? Should I buy a dedicated IP address for my shared web hosting, will it give me any added advantage?
yes, unique IP counts higher in Google's eyes. also, the more backlinks you get from unique IP's - the better
There is no real evidence about this. Most of the people have shared hosing accounts and there is no problem with it. The other questions are if you are building multiple sites and want to build links to each other. In this case, you need to get different IPs and also they should be with different c class hosting account. So, I recommend to not worry about that.