Official Homework Help Topic Options

[Jason]

Now that some of us are back to school, I'm sure you'll all have homework questions and stuff, so here's a topic where the best minds in the world can help you. We can help you with:

• Maths and programming
• Something short proofed
• Finding something online
• Help with graphics for a presentation
• Emotional support
• Shoulder massage (I could use one!!)

I don't encourage cheating, so when you help someone, try not to just flat out give them the answer if you can help it. Thanks and have fun.

PS: You won't be seeing me in this topic helping... I phailed everything about school. Except for the shoulder massages, but you must be a cute girl.

[Saffy]

Well, for one I don't believe you can just remove the absolute value indicators as you did. You seemed to have to just used it to invert 8 into -8 which from what i recall is a no no. You need to keep those bars in place until there's a solvable solution.

Now since you have the absolute value bars you need to realize you're diverging onto two separate answers which will require two different equations.

Equation the First:

(1/4x - 5) = 8

Equation the Second:

-(1/4x - 5) = 8

Note the additional minus (-) sign on the second equation. The absolute value bars indicate that we'll take positive value of the solution. Essentially if the value is negative we'll flip it =\ I'm not too good at explaining why there's two equations, but hopefully you can follow along anyway.

Continuing forward we just solve both equations.

(1/4x - 5) = 8
1/4x - 5 = 8
1/4x = 8 + 5
1/4x = 13
x = 4*13
x = 52

-(1/4x - 5) = 8
-1/4x + 5 = 8
-1/4x = 3
x = -4*3
x = -12

So x = -12, 52. And we'll prove this to be correct now!

|-12/4 - 5| = 8
|-3 - 5| = 8
|-8| = 8
8 = 8

|52/4 - 5| = 8
|13 - 5| = 8
|8| = 8
8 = 8

If necessary I'll explain better :)