Exercise 44 Page 548

Let's begin with recalling the Cross Products Property. In a proportion, the product of the extremes equals the product of the means. a/b=c/d ⇒ a d= bcUsing this property, we can solve the given equation. Remember that we need to treat x-3 like one term. x-3/4=1/2 ⇒ ( x-3) 2= 4( 1) As we can see both Mollie and Eva made mistakes at this step. Therefore, neither of them are correct. Let's solve the above equation to find the correct answer.

(x-3)2=4(1)

MultByOne

a * 1=a

(x-3)2=4

DivEqn

.LHS /2.=.RHS /2.

(x-3)1=2

MultByOne

a * 1=a

x-3=2

AddEqn

LHS+3=RHS+3

x=5