194k views
4 votes
You have money in your wallet, but unsure of the exact amount. When a friend asks you, you say that you have 1500 pesos give or take 100. Write an absolute value equation that will give the least and greatest amount of money in your pocket and solve the equation.

1 Answer

4 votes

Final answer:

To determine the range of money you could have, set up the absolute value equation |x - 1500| = 100. Solve for x to find that you could have either 1400 or 1600 pesos, meaning you must have between these two amounts inclusive.

Step-by-step explanation:

To find the least and greatest amount of money you could have in your wallet, given that you have 1500 pesos with a possible error of 100 pesos in either direction, you can set up an absolute value equation. The absolute value of a number represents its distance from zero on the number line without considering direction, so it's perfect for this situation.

The equation would be |x - 1500| = 100, where x represents the actual amount of money you have. To solve this equation, consider the two scenarios- the amount is 100 more or 100 less than 1500.

The first scenario is x - 1500 = 100, which means x = 1600. So, one possibility is that you have 1600 pesos.

The second scenario is x - 1500 = -100, which means x = 1400. This gives us the other possibility, that you have 1400 pesos.

Therefore, the least amount you might have is 1400 pesos, and the greatest amount might be 1600 pesos.

User Michael Quiles
by
8.7k points