Question

What is "A number decreased by 4 is less than 14" written as an inequality?

Answer 1

Answer:

"A number decreased by 4 is less than 14" written as an inequality is $x$ - 4 < 14

Step-by-step explanation:

First: Figure out what a number decreased by 4 is.

Well, a number decreased by 4, how would that look like? To find out, we should look for some key words in the term. So, I will bold out the keywords in the term this time:

A number decreased by 4

That word 'decreased' gives us a hint. Out of the four basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), 'decreased' fits into the subtraction category best. So we can replace 'decreased' with a minus sign. Since we don't know the specific value of 'A number', we will assign it a variable, the variable $x$. 4 is just 4 so we can leave that number alone. So the first term would look like this:

A number decreased by 4 = $x$ - 4

Second: Since we know what the first term is, we need to find out what the second term is and the inequality sign.

This step is quite easy. Let's tackle the inequality sign first:

A number decreased by 4 is less than 14

The only words that would describe an inequality sign are the words: 'less than'. The less than sign looks like this: <

Fourteen [just like four] is just a number so we don't need to change that

So our final product is this: $x$ - 4 < 14

Thank you for reading.

Topic: Inequalities