Exercise 4 Page 218

When evaluating a piecewise function, the first thing we need to do is to determine which interval contains the input value. This time, we want to find $f(3).$ This means that we need the interval that contains $x=3.$ The interval $\text{-}2\le x\le 5$ contains $3,$ so we need to substitute the value into the second equation of the function.