Question

What would you look for in a word problem that might indicate that you need to use an absolute value inequality?

Answer 1

some sort of phase that references the distance between two points being
(i) less than or within some number of units, eg, |x-a|<5 "the distance between x and a is less than 5 units"
or
(ii) greater than some number of units, eg, |x-a|>5 "the distance between x and a is more than 5 units"