Question

Henry has a reading list of 10 books that he can choose from to read this week. Identify the constraint for the number of books Henry can read the week.

Answer 1

Answer:

• b ≤ 10, which means number of books less than or equal to 10.

Explanation:

In mathematical language a constraint is a limitation on the values that a variable can take.

In this case, the constraint is given by the fact that there are 10 books in the reading list from which Henry can choose to read this week.

So, the number of books that he can read is 1, 2, 3, ..., 10 (at most). This is, 10 books is an upper bound.

To represent an upper bound, you use the inequality symbol ≤, which means less than or equal to.

Henry can read as many as 10 books, so that is less than or equal to 10.

If you call b the number of books, the constrain may be written as:

• b ≤ 10.

constraint is a condition of an optimization problem that the solution must satisfy. There are several types of constraints—primarily equality constraints, inequality constraints, and integer constraints. The set of candidate solutions that satisfy all constraints is called the feasible set.[1