Julia is allowed to watch no more than 5 hours of television a week. So far this week, she has watched 1.5 hours.

Question

Write and solve an inequality to show how many hours of television Julia can still watch this week. I know how to solve inequalities, but I have trouble writing them from a word problem. Can somebody please show me how to write the inequality, using this word problem? Thank you! 

Answer 1

Let's look for keywords or phrases in our problem.  As you read them, ask yourself "what does this mean in mathematical terms?"  In our problem, we can find that...

 

"how many hours...can still watch" is an

      unknown which we will assign as "x",

"no more than 5" means "≤ 5",

"watched 1.5 hours" means "+1.5" (add 1.5

      hours to the unknown value OR subtract 1.5

      hours form the total).

 

So let's write our equation...

        x + 1.5 ≤ 5

 

Always look for keywords and phrases, and translate them into mathmatical terms.