Question

Choose the inequality that represents the given graph:

Answer 1

Answer: x < 0

There is no underline under the "less than" sign

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How I got this answer:

We have an open hole at 0, and shading to the left. The shading represents all the possible solutions. For example, x = -1 is a solution since it is in the blue shaded region. We can list out the numbers -7, -6, -5, -4, -3, -2, -1 as values in the solution set, but we'd be working forever since there are infinitely many numbers in this set. Also, we'd be excluding fractional and decimal values using this slow method.

As a shortcut, we can just say "any number less than 0 is a solution" which we write as x < 0 or "x is less than zero". We do not include x = 0 itself due to the open hole at 0 on the number line.