Real-World Applications & Project Ideas - Equality and Inequality

Once students have mastered the skill in this toolkit, they can try out these relevant activities.

These are also great ideas for students who can do the math work above but struggle with explaining it.

Lastly, it is effective to have students solidify their understanding by doing hands-on and real-world applications.

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• You want to buy a video game that costs $30, and you currently have $15. Set up the equation where a variable represents the additional money you need. By solving the equation, you can figure out how much more money you need to save.
•  Try to determine how many hours you need to study each day to finish a book in a week. Set up an equation where x is the number of hours you need to study each day to complete the book in a week. 
• Imagine a situation where you are planning a party and want to buy enough snacks for everyone. If each bag of chips costs $2, and you have a budget of $20 for snacks, set up the equation to find out how many bags of chips you can buy within your budget.
• Conduct an experiment to determine the relationship between the number of hours spent studying and test scores. Use variables like x for hours of study and y for test scores. By collecting data, forming equations, and analyzing the results, you can draw conclusions about the impact of study time on test performance.
• Track your savings in a piggy bank, use the variable s to represent the total savings. If you save $5 each week for w weeks it represents the relationship between total savings and the number of weeks.
• Explore the growth of a plant under different conditions. Use variables like ℎ or the height of the plant and d for the number of days. By collecting data, forming equations, and observing the plant's growth, make conclusions about the factors influencing the plant's development.