Sharmaine's Scribe Post for Novermber 12, 2010

Hi everyone! In math class we were assigned to do question in the textbook. I was assigned to do question 25 on page 70.

The question was:

The following expression has a value of 1
[- 1/2 + (- 1/2)] / [-1/2 + (-1/2)]

Use - 1/2 four times to write expressions with each of the following values.

a) -1 b) 0
c)1/4 d) 4
e) - 3/4 f) -1 1/2

What i did to figure out if my answer was correct i simply changed -1/2 in a decimal which would be -0.5.

a) [-1/2 + (- 1/2)] + [-1/2 - (-1/2)] = 1

-0.5 + -0.5 = -1
-0.5 - -0.5=0
-1 + 0 = -1

b) [-1/2 - (-1/2)] - [-1/2-(-1/2)]= 0

-0.5 - -0.5 =0
-0.5 - -0.5=0
0-0=0

c)[-1/2 x (-1/2)] - [-1/2 - (-1/2)]= -1

-0.5 x -0.5 = 0.25
-0.5 - -0.5 = 0
0.25 - 0 = 0.25
but in fraction form it would be 1/4

d) (-1/2) / (-1/2) / (-1/2) / (-1/2)= 4

-0.5 / -0.5 / -0.5 / -0.5 = 4
-0.5 / -0.5 = 1
1 / -0.5 = -2
-2/ -0/5 = 4

e) [-1/2 + (-1/2)] + [-1/2 x (-1/2)]= -3/4

-0.5 + -0.5 = -1
-0.5 x -0.5 = 0.25 or 1.4
-1 + 0.25 = -0.75 or -3/4

f) (-1/2) / (-1/2) / (-1/2) - (-1/2) = -1 1/2

-0.5 / -0.5 / -0.5 - -0.5 = -1.5 or -3/2 or -1 1/2
-0.5 / -0.5 = 1
1 / -0.5 = -2
-2 - -0.5 = -1.5 or -3/2 0r - 1 1/2

PLEASE COMMENT AND CORRECT ME IF I HAD ANY MISTAKES