Here, we see two numbers are being multiplied together in the inequality ( and ). And we know that the only way to multiply two numbers together and get a number less than 0 is to multiply a positive and a negative number together. (positive * positive = positive; and negative * negative = positive)
Thus, we know that is true in either of the following situations:
1. and
2. and
If you look at the first statement carefully, you may note that it can never be true. As previously stated, positive * positive = positive; and negative * negative = positive, so there is no way you can take any integer, square it, and get a negative number. This means, we only need to concern ourselves with the second situation, and .
So, let's solve the two inequalities:
(get the square root of both sides)
So, we get as our answer. (because all items > -8 are also > 0, so we use the more restrictive option as our final answer to ensure all possibilities work.)
We can always double check our work. Let's take , as that satisfies our answer condition. Plugging it into our original inequality:
, which is a true statement.