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How Do You Solve a Word Problem By Writing an Inequality?

Your favorite baseball team, the Swinging Nerds, won less than one third of their games this season. If they played 33 games, how many is the most they could have won?

Summary

  1. Let's make an equation!
  2. 'g' is a variable that stands for the number of games possibly won
  3. '<' is an inequality symbol that means less than
  4. Now we have 'g is less than one third of the total number of games played'
  5. The number of games possibly won is less than 11
  6. The Swinging Nerds won at most 10 games!

Notes

    1. 'g' is a variable
    1. 'g' is a variable
    1. '<', or less than, is what makes this equation an inequality
    1. 33 is the total number of games
    1. Simplify the right hand side of the inequality by multiplying
    1. 1/3 times 33 is the same as 33/3, or 11
    1. g < 11
    1. The Swinging Nerds cannot just play part of a game, so we are looking for a number that is 1 less than 11
    1. 10 is the largest whole number that is less than 11
    2. So that is the largest number of games that the team could have won!