8. An Introduction to Equations
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Use mental math to guess the starting value for the table.
2
4x-1=7 In order to choose a good starting point for our table, let's pretend that the equation is 4x=7. What multiplied by 4 would get us close to 7? 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.
x | 4x-1 | = |
---|---|---|
1 | 4 (1)-1 | 3 |
2 | 4 (2)-1 | 7 |
3 | 4 (3)-1 | 11 |
4 | 4 (4)-1 | 15 |
We can see that x=2 is the solution to our equation.