8. An Introduction to Equations
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Use mental math to guess the starting value for the table.
3
51/2=7-1/2b In order to choose a good starting point for our table, let's pretend that the equation is 5 12=- 12b. What multiplied by - 12 would get us close to 5 12? -11 is a good guess, so let's try it in our table. We can work our way from there.
b | 7-1/2b | = |
---|---|---|
-11 | 7-1/2( -11) | 12 12 |
-5 | 7-1/2( -5) | 9 12 |
0 | 7-1/2 (0) | 7 |
1 | 7-1/2 (1) | 6 12 |
2 | 7-1/2 (2) | 6 |
3 | 7-1/2 (3) | 5 12 |
We can see that b=3 is the solution to our equation.