Gwen B. answered • 03/15/19
Test Preparation for Adult Learners
This one looks brutal at first - if you don't have a calculator!
You probably already know that "solving for x" is just a fancy way of saying "getting the x by itself" on the left side of the equation.
You probably also know that whatever you do to one side of an equation, you'll also have to do to the other side of the equations.
(If you didn't know one of both of those things, now you do! Remember them FOREVER....or at least until you graduate.)
Getting "x" by itself on the left side of the equation is easy. 51x just means 51 times x. If we want just one x (and we do), we can divide 51x by 51.
Of course, now we have to do the same thing to the right side of the equation that we did to the left side. This means we must divide 204 by 51 (whether we like it or not).
With a calculator, it's a snap.
204 ÷ 51 = 4.
No calculator? No problem! This one was actually written to give you a nice, clean, whole number as your final answer. Take a closer look at the numbers 204 and 51, and think about the nearest numbers that are multiples of 10, (Remember multiples of 10? Numbers like 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 80 & so on?)
204 looks pretty close to our old familiar buddy, 200, and 51 is just about as close as it gets to 50. By knowing that 50 goes into 200 four times, we can figure out that 204 ÷ 51 = 4.
That gives us our answer: x = 4
See? Not terrible. (You still might want to just buy the calculator though.) :-D
