8. An Introduction to Equations
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Use mental math to guess the starting value for the table.
4
8-5w=- 12 In order to choose a good starting point for our table, let's pretend that the equation is -5 w=- 12. What multiplied by -5 would get us close to -12? 2 or 3 would be equally valid, so let's try those. We should also try one digit less and one digit greater, just to be on the safe side.
w | 8-5w | = |
---|---|---|
1 | 8-5 (1) | 3 |
2 | 8-5 (2) | -2 |
3 | 8-5 (3) | -7 |
4 | 8-5 (4) | -12 |
We can see that w=4 is the solution to our equation.