Melissa wants to spend no more than $250 on school clothes. she spends $50 on a coat and then wants to buy some sweaters that are on special for $25 each. solve the inequality 50 + 25s < 250 to find the greatest number of sweaters she can buy. 8 sweaters 7 sweaters 10 sweaters 9 sweaters

Hello.

They have given you the equation 50 + 25s < 250, and then you just need to solve it algebraically.

50 + 25s < 250
-50              -50
25s < 200
/ 25    / 25
s < 8

Therefore, she can only buy 7 sweaters, because 7 is less than 8, and she wants to use no more than 250 dollars. If she were to buy 8 sweaters, she would use $250, and according to the given equation, it does not work. Let's check it!

50 + 25(7) < 250
50 + 175 < 250
225 < 250 -- It's correct!

Your final answer is 7 sweaters.

Let's solve the inequality! We will ignore the number with the variable. So, let's look at 50. Right now, 50 is a positive number. To solve the inequality, we need to use the inverse operation. The opposite/inverse of +50 is -50. So we will subtract 50 on both sides of the inequality. 
25s+50 <250
        -50   -50
The +50 and the -50 cancel each other out leaving us with:
25s<200
Now, let's look at 25s. The operation is multiplication. The inverse/opposite is division. So we must divide 25 into both sides.
25s/25 <  200/25 
The 25s/25 cancel out, leaving us with the answer of:
s<8 (But since the problem states "no more than $250"...the answer would be a greater than or equal to sign like this ≤. Maybe you didn't know how to type this symbol, so I gave you two choices and you decide if your worksheet has this:≤ or this:<. If this:≤ then s≤8 would be the right answer.)
So, the greatest number of sweaters Melissa can buy is 8 sweaters IF it has this sign ≤ in the inequality like this: 50+25s≤250. If not, the answer would be 7 sweaters because the answer has to be the greatest number of sweaters, but also less than 8.
 Hope this helped!