SOLUTION: what is -5 < x _< 4

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Question 71701: what is -5 < x _< 4
Answer by bucky(2189) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
What is -5+%3C+x+%3C=+4 ?????
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This is just a mathematical way of writing that x has to be greater than minus 5 and it
has to be less than or equal to plus 4. Notice how the sign between the x and the 4
looks. If you don't have a math program for writing math expressions the way this
site does, you may have to use something like _< as you did, or maybe =< or something
that gives people the idea that you really mean "less than or equal to" in the same way
as a textbook would print the sign as shown above between the x and the 4.
.
Note that the arrow (shown as a "<" in the notation) always points to the smaller quantity.
So from the notation statement you can say that -5 is smaller than x and x is smaller
than (or equal to) plus 4.
.
Finally, another way to read the above statement is that x on the number line is only
allowed to be between -5 and +4 ... with the addition that it can't equal -5 but it can
equal +4.
.
Hope this brief discussion helps you to understand the notation a little better. Maybe
at least one of these ways of looking at the notation makes more sense to you than the
others. This "greater than" and "less than" is a shorthand way of writing limits on the size
of a variable without having to use a lot of words.