audio read-through Solving Simple Sentences By Inspection

In this exercise, you will practice solving sentences ‘by inspection’. That is, you will look at the sentence, stop and think, and come up with a number that makes the sentence true.

Some sentences have exactly one solution. Some sentences have many solutions; you will provide only one. You should do this exercise without using a calculator.

Examples

Question: Solve:   $x = 5$
Answer: $5$
Question: Solve:   $x \gt 5$
Answer: $\,5.1\,,$   or $\,6\,,$   or $\,1007.4\,$;   any number in the interval $\,(5,\infty)\,$ (You may want to review interval notation.)
Question: Solve:   $\displaystyle\frac{x}{6} = \frac{1}{2}$
Answer: $3$
Question: Solve:   $x + 2 = 9$
Answer: $7$

Practice