Pearson Algebra 1 Common Core, 2011
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Pearson Algebra 1 Common Core, 2011 View details
8. An Introduction to Equations
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Exercise 85 Page 58

Use mental math to guess the starting value for the table.

3

Practice makes perfect
We want to use a table to solve the given equation.

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.